


Mixed Blessings

by binz, shiplizard



Series: Near Miss [5]
Category: Dresden Files - All Media Types, Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Big Bang, Case Fic, F/F, Irish Mythology - Freeform, Ladyporn, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 10:13:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/binz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiplizard/pseuds/shiplizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Illinois: a sweltering summer. Karrin Murphy: a tough Chicago cop vacationing in a small lakeside town in Wisconsin. It's going to be a working vacation, though; a woman has just been attacked, and it's going to lead Murphy into a supernatural turf war as old as Lake Michigan itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mixed Blessings

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the second round of the Case Story Big Bang!
> 
> Art provided by Becca Stareyes! (Thank you!) See it [here!](http://invoking-urania.dreamwidth.org/75320.html)
> 
> [art auction pieces from [covenmouse](http://covenmouse.livejournal.com/) and [rumandkerosene](http://rumandkerosene.livejournal.com/) via [help_japan](http://help-japan.livejournal.com/) forthcoming!]
> 
> And big thanks to grenegome and Adri for their betaing eyes!
> 
> This fic takes place in [the Near Miss universe](http://archiveofourown.org/series/10160), an AU where Marcone didn't become a mob boss but did become Harry's mechanic. This fic should stand on its own, and knowledge of the series is not necessary.

It was June in Chicago, and the station was so air conditioned that it could make you long for beat patrol in full polyester. I was riding a desk; had been for the last two and a half weeks. The frostbite was starting to set in.

Leonid Kravos (drug dealer, occultist, all around shithead) had killed himself in a Chicago DOC jail cell about a year ago. He'd then proceeded to make life a living hell for many citizens of Chicago and members of its law enforcement community; not the usual order of business, but I suppose he'd wanted to be creative. What remained of him was executed (or exorcised or excised like a tumor, pick your ex-word) about two weeks after that-- but the man was an overachiever. He was _still_ making my life difficult.

I'd almost believed it for a while: that his death in custody was my fault. That I'd been too violent. Harassed him. Hadn't checked thoroughly enough for weapons. That I'd let a mentally-unstable man smuggle a knife into custody and disembowel himself with it because I was slacking off, because I was angry, because it was _that time of the month, you know how women are_. It was a grim relief when I found out that he'd just been another jail-breaker-- leaving his body for freedom and a new un-life as a murderous ghost. The ritual dagger had been smuggled in by a friendly cop, directly and with love from Mrs Madeline LaBelle Vargassi née Raith, unofficial head of the department.

Tell the Chicago Bureau of Police that, though. I barely believed it myself. It didn't seem fair to believe it: it exonerated me too completely. I know a guy who says that the reason that people don't believe in magic anymore is because we're afraid. Bullshit. It's because we're cynics. We're not willing to accept that some things really aren't our fault. That's _cheating_.

They'd tried to crucify me for the Kravos thing, but it hadn’t stuck. Now they were trying to rattle me out of the department. It's a fine old CPD tradition. Ask any female veteran older than forty. Ask any black veteran older than sixty. But it could only work if I let myself rattle, and I'm too stubborn.

Private security firms were booming in the violent city. I'd been quietly approached with more than a few job offers, students of mine from the local dojo, a few ex-cops who’d been less stubborn and had more sense. Maybe it was just pride that kept me holding onto my badge. I prefer to think that it was conviction; a rock-solid Irish conviction, the kind almost as thick as our skulls. The police were supposed to be the protectors of the people; the department of justice was supposed to be just. While the lapdogs running the department might not be doing their jobs anymore-- traded it all in jockeying to get their noses further up Missus Vargassi's airbrushed-perfect ass and into her husband's pocket-- that didn't mean I wasn't going to. 

It was something to cling to, at least, when the office was a BO-ridden meat-freezer, every Officer and Detective who stopped in adding to the smell, and I was playing secretary, processing new intakes and fielding irate phone calls.

The new intern was coming out of Carmichael's office: she caught my eye accidentally and winced away from it. Lynn was twenty at the most, still at that larval cop stage where the vestigial dreams and illusions haven't fallen off yet. They're so cute when they're little. She had bad news for me: she couldn't have telegraphed it any more clearly with a series of flags.

"Officer Murphy? Sergeant Carmichael told me to take over for a few minutes," Lynn squeaked out. "He wants-- he asked if you could see him in his office?"

"Thanks, Lynn," I said, as kindly as I could. It wasn't her fault she was young. "If Mr. Smith with the Gold Coast Neighborhood Watch calls back, tell him we're still working on his complaint."

She tittered awkwardly. "More suspicious Girl Scouts?"

One of the little girls had been black. Smith had quite rationally assumed that she was going for her 'casing the joint for her gang' merit badge.

Some days it's hard to love this city.

I shook my head. "Some Mormons visited him. He's yelling about cult activity."

That made her smile, although her face was pained. She'd make it as a cop, if I was right about her. She had the sense of self and she was slowly developing her gallows humor. I could wish her another city to do it in, though. I stood up to offer her the desk chair-- she had to pull the little tab and raise it a good six inches to sit comfortably-- and the phones. Poor kid. 

I went to talk to Carmichael.

 

Ron didn't look up when I knocked on the open door, or once I'd shut it behind me. I leaned back against the wall and waited. He was bent over his little brick of a computer, the thing five years past obsolete, typing two fingers at a time, his bald patch staring me right in the face. He's a good guy, Carmichael. A good cop. Doesn't always look it, if you're used to prime time and a six pack, but he's one of the best I know. That's why he has this little dark dungeon of an office and not me. We've never really talked about it. But it's not like we'd have much to say. Maybe I should have gotten it first. But I didn't. Brass hates me. They hate him. Who knows, maybe they flipped a coin, and now he has to deal with the extra paperwork and not me. 

"... Murphy," he said finally, stopping his pecking at the keyboard and leaning back in his chair, puffing out a breath that made his red face look like someone had popped a balloon. "Karrin."

"Oh hell," I said. "Lynn's out there looking like she ran over my dog. Just tell me. What's the verdict?"

He sighed; rubbed at his mouth. "Two weeks psychiatric. It’ll go in your file as personal leave. Half pay. No provided counseling. Evaluation first day back."

"...Can they do that, legally?" I asked, more out of morbid curiosity than anything. "Make me foot the bill for my own shrink?"

"No. Seeing a counselor is voluntary. But you come back and you're not 'feeling better,' they can hold you liable. Of course, as your superior officer, I'd recommend you not do anything that would exacerbate your problems. By which I mean paying your own actual goddamn money to that creep they call a counselor."

"Mary Mother of God," I leaned back, closing my eyes.

"Also as your superior, I'm allowed to recommend that you engage in a low-stress recreational activity. ...They don't want you at the dojo, Karrin."

"Of course they don't. Did they specify 'watching her stories' and 'knitting' as the recreational activities, or are those just implied?"

"They're trying to get you off the force, not me murdered by my own officer," he snorted. "I haven't pissed them off that badly yet; I'm biding my time."

"Ron, give it up. You'll never catch up with me." I jerked my chin up and pulled a basketball-court sneer in the finest trash-talking tradition.

He laughed, but not happily. "Me, I'd stay home and play _Halo_." He shrugged one shoulder. "Maybe go fishing. Just stay out of the dojo and stay out of the precinct for two weeks."

"You're breaking my heart," I griped.

"You'll recover," he said bluntly. "This is important, Karrin. Stay away from your cases; stay out of trouble. Don't even think of letting Dresden drag you into some spooky voodoo shootout. Go visit your great aunt Tallulah in Florida, for all I care." He pushed up from his chair and held out a hand. "Two weeks starts now, Karrin. Badge and weapon. I gotta turn them in."

"I don't have a great aunt Tallulah," I said, and rocked forward on my heels. I'd known he'd need my badge, my gun. I'd known, suspected, this whole thing was coming. Was pretty standard, really. For the cops who'd been chased off the force these past few years, that is. Didn't mean I wanted to give them up, though.

This guy I know, Dresden. He of the spooky voodoo shootouts. He believes all sorts of crazy stuff. Can do all sorts of crazy stuff too, so he might be right. He wears this pentacle around his neck like a thirteen year old you'd expect to find hoarding black candles, but he really believes in it. Believes in what it represents. Doesn't go to church or anything like that, but we've faced some pretty messed up things together, and his pentacle’s worked just well as my Nan's old cross for holding the demons at bay. Real demons. And it's sort of like that. I don't need the badge. I know who I am. But it helps. 

I handed it over; set the safety, and put my weapon on Carmichael's desk. 

Ron looked down at his watch; glanced at the calendar on his desk, next to a picture frame holding an image snipped from a magazine. Everest, I think. "Almost three o'clock," he said. "When'd you start; six? You take your lunch? No? Worked late last night, too, didn't you? Sounds like you put in a full shift to me. Time to head home. Who knows, grab a beer, catch a game on TV. Come back to work bright-eyed and fresh-faced. In two weeks."

"Two weeks," I repeated. "Fuck, Ron." At least he hadn't apologized. "I'll get you a souvenir," I told him. "Ten years on the job and all I got was this lousy psych break. Postcard of a reach-around: wish I were here."

“Wouldn’t want one from this place,“ Carmichael grunted. “Lord knows what you might catch.” His gaze darted down to my ankle, where he knows I keep my backup piece, but he just laughed, a congested huff and a snort, hunched forward, and started pecking at his keyboard again. "See you, Murphy," he said. "Keep your eyes on."

* * *

I went home, numb to the too-hot June weather and my car's overactive A/C. I considered taking up Carmichael's advice and getting a beer-- I drove past my old haunts, now full of over-promoted cronies, and kept going. Even the cop bars had gone bad. Damn shame. The best beer in the city was in a little hole in the wall called Mac's, anyway; I risked Loop traffic and swung past it, but didn't stop; there was a familiar red Cadillac in the parking lot. Marcone was there, possibly with Harry Dresden in tow. Strange, for mid-afternoon on a Monday, but keeping track of Marcone’s work schedule has never been high on my To Give a Fuck List.

The mechanic hadn't done anything to me personally; we don't like each other basically on principal. He doesn't like cops. I don't like buttonmen. Dresden gets along all right with him-- well, more than all right, but that wasn't any of my business except when someone makes it my business-- but Dresden largely kept his nose out of mob business before Marco Vargassi and his girlfriend took over. I remembered Marco's dad; he'd been plenty bad for the city, and I didn't trust anyone who'd worked for him, even if Marcone did happen to be on the outs with the new management. 

The kicker of it was that Marcone, when it came down to it, wasn’t a bad guy. And when I spent too much time with him, I started to like him, and started to forget things I needed to remember. He could be my friend’s boyfriend; I could get along with him, I could tease him, but we couldn’t be friends ourselves. And fuck it, right now, I think he’d understand. He’d be the better friend of the two. And I didn’t want to deal with that. I didn't want to deal with Marcone. I didn't want to talk to Harry-- he blames himself for things. It's exhausting, and I was low on energy as it was. 

I went home; got out of uniform, showered until the hot water tank ran out in a shock of cold and my skin was as red and raw as a sunburn. Got dressed, jeans and t-shirt. Paced around the house, restless in the air conditioning that was too cold and the eddies of steam escaping from the bathroom. I considered therapy food, briefly. A steak, maybe, or an ice cream place. Something bloody or something sweet. But I wasn’t hungry; just tense, all the way through. I could get really girly and go shopping-- I needed new boots, and I'd been idly considering a new pistol for a while-- but the whole 'half pay' thing took the shine off of that idea.

Still, I should at least eat something. I wasn't hungry, but that was my body lying to me; I'd feel like shit tomorrow if I didn't get something in my stomach. As I walked back into the kitchen, I saw the light on my answering machine going. A call must have come in while I was in the shower.

I considered ignoring it; I was on a mandated leave, after all, and the part of me that had snuck out my window when I was 17 to run away from my mother's house the best way I could think of chafed at the thought that the PD might be yanking the leash already. There's not that many other people who call me at home. I turned my back to the answering machine, fished out the last two pieces of my loaf of bread, the mostly-empty jar of peanut butter, and in nostalgic fit, an only slightly brown-speckled banana. I made it halfway through my sandwich before I turned back around and hit the 'play' button.

"Karrin?" my mother's voice said through the static. "It's your mother," she added.

Ah. I felt my shoulders go tense. Dresden had toasted my answering machine last year; I still tend to lose messages after a day. Maybe I’d have liked to lose this one. We weren't due for another reunion, were we? 

"Honey, it's important," she said, and I could hear the preemptive disappointment in her voice. She'd gone in assuming I'd say no. "I can't get away from the monthly luncheon until late; I'm hosting the after-tea bridge this month-- I told you at Christmas. Lillian's coming to visit, do you remember? Her flight’s supposed to land at five thirty. Someone's got to get her at the airport; she can't take a _cab_. I'm trying to get one of the boys to do it, but they're all working--"

And I wouldn’t be? Well, I wasn’t. Although I should have been, and wasn’t that the point of a message I wouldn’t have gotten until too late; a reminder of how my choices were making her life harder? She hadn’t even tried my cell phone. Lillian could take a cab-- she would, if I didn't go get her-- but she was eight months along, heaven knew if she even should have been flying. And Mom's views on pregnancy....

I picked the phone up, cutting off her message mid-guilt trip, and thunked in Mom's number.

"Mom. It's Karrin."

"Hello, sweetheart," Mom said. She started to bustle at me verbally-- how am I that, who am I this, that cousin's news and this cousin's job.

"I have the night off work," I said quietly, when I could cram a word in edgewise. "I can get Lillian. Is she flying into Midway or O’Hare?"

She switched off the chatter and was suddenly a general, spitting information at me. "And get her dinner, sweetie? She probably hasn't eaten. Thanks," she said, a throw-away piece of formality. Mom says please and thank you like a New York cabby swears; without thinking, so often it's lost its meaning.

Until I was in maternity wear, there was no pleasing Mom; the best I could hope for was not currently disappointing her.

* * *

The unseasonal heat was starting to give way to the inevitable when I pulled into the parking garage at O'Hare, and the dark clouds that had been churning and frothing on the horizon let loose with a rumble of thunder and a spat of rain. The air conditioning inside the airport was even stronger than the direct blast in my car, and I shivered in the gust that escaped the revolving entrance doors, zipping my sweatshirt up against it. I checked the flight number Mom had given me on a monitor, and let my mouth fall into a frown. Delayed. Yeah, Murphy; with the storm clouds almost directly overhead? No kidding.

I sighed, got myself over to Arrivals, and got in a line for some coffee; drip, overpriced. As I moved over to dose it with half and half and a packet of fancy raw sugar after I'd looked in vain for some Splenda, a man stepped lightly up to the counter beside me and ordered 'A hot green tea with a cinnamon scone'.

The voice came from about my height-- a rarity-- and sported a distinct accent. Japanese? I glanced over-- an Asian man, older than I'd been expecting, with a bald head and a groomed white beard that was in stark contrast to the bushiness of his white eyebrows. His eyes were magnified behind the lenses of his thin wire frame glasses, and he blinked in a way that reminded me of nothing so much as a cartoon owl.

"We’re all out of cinnamon," the barista said. “Would you like mixed berry? And what size of tea would you like?"

He bowed his head gracefully. "A small tea, please; no scone, thank you."

I'd sat down by the time he was given his tea-- I had my back to the counter, but I heard his footsteps padding very quietly towards me. His balance was good; I pegged him for martial arts, sometime in the past. Possibly still.

"May I sit?" he asked.

I bowed my head to him respectfully, and he returned the gesture, a quick bob, and broke into a wide smile. The chair squeaked loudly against the tiled floor when he pulled it out. He sipped his tea; I took the top off my coffee, holding the cup against my mouth. My nose, cold from the constant air conditioning, started to run and I sniffed gracelessly, rooting in my sweatshirt pocket for a tissue. 

"Here," the little man said. "As long as you do not mind the kind with lotion."

I blinked, looked over, and gratefully took a tissue from the little packet he’d offered. He hadn't bothered with a lid for his tea at all, and the steam from the cup had fogged up his glasses. I couldn't stop the smile before it started, and he peered through the fog at me, his innocent expression better than that of any of the scumbags I'd ever interrogated, then broke into an open grin. He pursed his lips on his smile, still twitching at the corners of his mouth, and slid his glasses off, using a tissue to clear the steam away. It left a smear behind and he sighed, shrugged, and tried again with the hem of his shirt. 

“These are the breaks, as they say,” he said, and took another drink of tea, promptly fogging up his glasses again. “But I am sure you know about this, no?”

I took a slow drink from my coffee to distract myself and let my thoughts organize before I said anything. There's some other people in the world who could learn that trick. I was either talking to a nice old man, or getting played by someone for something. Could be anybody. A straight con, and this little guy sizing up what kind of sucker I was. A reporter trying to get a story, waiting for me to drop a juicy line. Someone from the Vargassis or the PD, or both, much as the thought made my mouth turn a familiar taste of sour.

"You are waiting for someone?” He asked me, wobbling one hand in the air; an airplane, taking off and coming in to land. Elvis was singing about Spider Murphy on a tenor saxophone over the PA, and the little guy was bopping his head along absently. It was cute. Disarming.

"Yeah," I answered easily, weighing his interest in the back of my mind. Just friendly small talk? Or was he digging for something? "The landing was delayed. The storm."

The little man nodded, bald head reflecting the stark fluorescent lighting. "Such heat, this early. It will make storms most nights, I think."

"And tornado season in high-swing," I sighed. "Got to love this city, huh?" I took a long drink of coffee, leaned back in my chair. "What about you?"

"I, too, am here to meet someone," he said, and reached over to offer me his hand. "I am Shiro."

"Karrin." We shook. His grip was strong, but not unexpectedly so, his skin smooth and dry, and there was a peacefulness there, something that reminded me of someone in the right way, and it broke the line of tension running down my spine. My suspicions drained comfortably away to the background, like runoff after a rain, and I let myself smile honestly.

"I think there's a Cinnabon further down the terminal," I offered. I remembered passing it, and could probably smell it if I tried, under the bitter coffee fog that hung around the kiosk. "If you're still after cinnamon.” 

"You are most kind," he told me, sliding from his chair, threw out his empty tea cup, and bowed his head, ever so slightly, to me.

"Your balance is very impressive." I thought back to my initial assessment of his martial arts participation and revised it from ‘probably still’ to 'definitely still'. I wondered what dojo he used, where he practiced, what he practiced. "I hope you don't have to wait here too long."

"Not longer than I should," he said cheerfully. "Just long enough."

I glanced over his head at one of the display monitors; Lillian's plane had arrived two minutes ago. I checked my watch and looked over at the arrivals gate. "My cousin should be here soon," I said, rising to my feet and throwing the dregs of my coffee away. "It was nice meeting you, Shiro."

He smiled again, wide and unafraid. "Ah, family. I wish you the balance you need as well, in the face of such trials as these." His eyes twinkled behind those thick glasses, and he bowed his head gently and far more respectfully than I had given him reason to. "I am glad to have met you, Karrin. Goodbye."

I watched him go, a tiny, serene form cutting through the milling crowd, and waited until he disappeared around a line at the customer service station before I turned and went to wait with the rest of the impatient throng at the arrivals gate. God, parking was going to cost a fortune.

It took another fifteen minutes for Lillian's flight to start emptying out. Lillian came through the gate pulling her carry-on luggage, all two pounds of it, in a little wheeling-bag, huffing and red-cheeked and making good time for someone the size of a boat. Her eyes widened when she saw me. "Karrin. I was expecting--"

"--I know." My mother. One of my cousins. One of my brothers. "They were busy."

"Don't you have work?"

"No."

I might not have had much in common with Lillian, but she wasn't tactless or cruel. She smiled. "So! How's your mom?"

* * *

I woke up the next morning with a takeout hangover and the sun in my eyes, slapped at my alarm clock until the overly cheerful morning show hosts were replaced with silence, and tried to figure out why I had stayed up so late and why I didn't think I needed to get out of bed and ready for work.

...Oh right.

Well. If I had been well-rested, that certainly would have taken the oomph out of it.

My left foot was a block of ice where it was peeking out from beneath the covers, my little window A/C obviously in fine working order, and I pulled it back under, determined to make the most of my enforced vacation and sleep in. I lasted another restless hour before I stumbled to the bathroom, swearing and growling at the chilled tile and hardwood. I showered on autopilot, steaming heat that gave out halfway through and left me rinsing the conditioner out of my hair with water cold enough that, by the time I turned it off and stood shivering on the shower mat, I had goosebumps everywhere and my nipples felt like they could cut glass.

I ate handfuls of dry Cheerios and washed them down with sips of coffee for breakfast, and then finished off half a pint of toffee-swirl chocolate cappuccino ice cream as a chaser, working my way through the rest of the coffee pot.

The phone rang when I was midway through the sports section, just pushing eight o'clock. 

"Honey?" Mom said. She sounded surprised to hear me; probably would have preferred the machine. "I wasn't expecting you. Are you working the night shift again?"

"Mom," I said, shuffled the newspaper back into order, wiped the Cheerio crumbs from the table. "No--" I stopped, closed my eyes. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I did not want to have this conversation. Not like she wouldn’t find out eventually. No law enforcement family can keep secrets. "How's Lillian?"

It was the right distraction. Mom puttered, all happy tone and airy exclamations, about Lillian's visit, her due date, the maternity shopping they were going to do, the paint chips and colors she'd picked for the nursery, with names like Butterfly Daydreams and Cloudberry Summer Fair. I wiped the table down while she talked, ran some hot water and let the sink fill with suds, and put the dishes from last night and this morning in to soak.

"Sweetie," she finally said. "You haven't said two words this whole time. Is everything all right?" She'd been talking about drapes and the merits of mauve over yellow. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to have said. Mom doesn't call much anymore. I don't usually talk much when she does. It must have been her years of practice, honing in the moment I had something I didn't want to discuss.

I reached for the dishtowel, started drying the water and suds off my hands. "Mom," I said. I gripped the bridge of my nose, my hand wet and clean smelling. Dish soap always made me think of my grandmother. ...I really wanted someone to talk to. 

"Mom," I blurted it out before I could stop myself. "I'm on leave. For two weeks. That stupid, _stupid_ cult leader--"

"Oh, sweetheart," Mom said. The tension eased out of my shoulders, the confession its own relief; I rested my forehead on a fist, still wet, and let my back bow. I had the kitchen window open; the breeze picked up, rushed in humid and smelling like green grass and sunshine and Nan's garden, what I'd managed to maintain of it, at least. It caught the water on my hands, on my face, and I shivered. "Honey, that's wonderful." 

"--What?" I said, and Mom bowled past me, all enthusiasm.

"Think of it, honey; the timing is perfect. You can help me with Lillian, she said it was so nice to see you last night, we're going swatch-hunting after lunch, you'll love it. And my bridge game was such a success yesterday, the Church ladies and I were going to set up a tea party for after next Sunday's service; I'll need your help with that, and won't it be good for you, getting away from the job, settling back into your life? And such lovely weather. Why, Felicia Patrice, you remember her?"

"--Mom," I said. There was a ringing in my ears; I almost couldn't hear her over it.

"Her son Stephen, he's a dentist, he's so good about taking his mother out on the weekends. We have to introduce you two."

I pressed harder, the words almost winding me, like my chest had become an air gun. "Mom. This isn't." I squeezed my eyes shut, shook my head. "I've already made plans." I stood up and rolled my shoulders; cracked my neck to free up the burning in my gut, the old hurdle I'd walked into unthinkingly. A deep breath in, then I let the anger escape before it could come out as shouting.

And now I knew that I was leaving, like Ron had said. I was out.

"I just wanted to let you know. I'll be out of town until at least next weekend. Leaving right away. I've got to go now. Was there anything else?"

"Honey!" Mom said, clucking her disappointment. "Really, can't you reconsider--"

"Afraid not," I said, "give me a call in a few weeks, tell me how it all went. Love you; bye."

I squeezed the phone in my hand for a minute after I hung up, half sure it was going to ring, and put it carefully back on its charger when it didn't. I dried my dishes and put them away. Took out the garbage. Ran through a routine of katas in the living room until I could think clearly, then flipped the mattress in the spare room up against the wall and boxed until my knuckles were swelling under my wraps and my shoulders burned. I had another shower, jerked off leaning against the wall, and let the water run cold again. Then I packed two weeks’ worth of underwear, a few changes of clothes, my backup sidearm, and my toiletries into my bike's saddlebags, movements sharp and hard with leftover anger and energy, made sure I had water and my wallet and some food and cash and gas, and was on the road before ten.

 

I stopped at Harry's place-- his and Marcone's, the jerk had been living there almost two years now-- and fidgeted in the doorway until their heavy security door dragged open and Marcone looked out at me, gaze as sharp as a sniper's, scanning up the stairwell and the space around me. He's cautious. It's a good thing; Chicago's had more than its fair share of trouble these past few years, and not all of it was stopped by sunlight, no matter where Harry tended to focus.

"Officer Murphy," Marcone said, tone calm and politely conversational, like it always is when you surprise him. He's a hard one to rattle, John Marcone. "I'm afraid Harry's at work-- were you looking for him?"

"Marcone," I said, and narrowed my eyes to let him know not to bother with any bullshit. "You guys going to be in town the next few weeks?"

Marcone pushed the door open a little further. He was dressed in workout gear, a sweaty sleeveless shirt and sweatpants shredded at the knees, and it didn't look like he'd shaved yet. I must have interrupted him. I was half surprised he wasn't at the garage, although his Caddy in the parking lot had suggested as much. I wasn't going to ask. "I think so," he said evenly, expression going politely curious with the slant of a few facial muscles.

It's sort of creepy. Not that I'd ever be thankful to Marco Vargassi for anything, but it was an open secret who'd been behind the drive-by five years ago that had put Marcone in hospital for a month, and had eventually taken him off old Tony's payroll via resulting power struggle, and I was glad I'd never had to officially face him from the other side of the law. Yeah, I’d looked at his file. Like he’d have ever expected me not to. 

Of course, one of these days I was going to have to ask him about the Beckitt family, the bystanders who'd been out for a family trip to the park and ended up witnessing the shootout. They'd disappeared a couple of months later, and there was no way anyone was going to convince me that the Outfit wasn't neck deep in the details, not with the never-substantiated statements that a man on crutches with his left leg in a cast had been seen talking to them before they vanished. There weren’t many ways that story could have ended happily. 

"Was there something you needed?"

I reached into my leather jacket, already too hot for the weather, but I'd need it for the road, and pulled out an envelope. "I'm going to be out of town for a while-- no more than two weeks."

He didn't say anything, didn't change his expression, but a surge of anger in my belly told me he knew. I cocked my hip; tipped my chin up half an inch. Dared him to comment. He didn't. 

I held the envelope out, the key inside tipping it down at the end. "Think you could ask Harry to water my plants for me until I'm back? Bring my mail in?" I pinched my lips. This part was more difficult. "And if the OLEBES needs me, would you let them know when I'll be back, and to call my cell? Maybe handle things. In the meantime?" We worked in different circles for the slowly-growing group, but I had no illusions Marcone couldn't take a few back doors and reach the same places I could. "It's the house key," I added, gesturing with the envelope. 

He nodded, his thinking-face on, and we both waited while I pushed the envelope over the threshold, past Harry's security system, whatever that is exactly, before he took it.

"Yeah," he said, that casually pleasant tone back in his voice. "No problem. You need anything else?" I shook my head, sharp fast movements, and he nodded. "Okay. You have a good trip."

There wasn't anything like sympathy or pity in his eyes or voice. I was almost grateful, until I was angry again. I spun on my heel, as fast as my old motorcycle boots would let me, and broke the speed limit the minute I was out of city traffic. And then I just rode.

* * *

Eventually I stopped, mostly because I needed gas and a drink that wasn’t out of one of my tepid water bottles or a water fountain at a rest stop, following a faded sign to a service station and general store tucked into the woods up the Door Peninsula. It was late afternoon, the sun gone all syrupy and gold, a few good hours still until it set. Hours until I'd have set, too, but I was going to run out of road before I ran out of drive, and there was something about the stillness here, the steadily baking heat and the thick woods and the promise of a wind off the water that made me turn down the little side lane when I saw it and the sign, barely a break in the trees along the old county road.

It cut deep through the woods, criss-crossing branches overhead, enough wear on the road to let me know it was plenty old and plenty used, although the fresh patches of pine needles and the odd fallen leaf and the weeds peeking up through the cracks in the asphalt made me wonder when the last time it had been used was. It gave way to gravel when a building came into view, all faded grey wood and a sign that had barely enough paint left for me to make out the words _Jackson Daily's_.

I filled up and then parked the bike out front, between a rusted out pick-up and an '83 Malibu wagon like my mother used to have, left my helmet there, and walked up the old wooden steps and into the old wooden building.

It was dim inside, the bright sun that had saturated my vision replaced with scattered, flickering bulbs hung haphazardly from the rafted ceiling, and the difference was almost enough to leave me staggering. I blinked and kept moving only due to training; going to the right, stepping back once I was clear of the door and my back was almost against the wall and I wasn't blocking the entrance. It was brighter there, sunlight diffusing faintly through a small, grimy window; I squinted until the vague outlines filling the store began to take on firmer, more familiar shapes.

The place was bigger than I'd realized. There were a couple of coolers off to my side, some magazine racks, rows of shelves taken up with a mishmash of things, boxes of food and cans, bread and paper towels, and different types of cleaners, with more shelves down the back that looked to be hung and stacked with clothes, and a few big barrels tucked up against a large central counter. There was a woman behind the counter, leaning on it to talk with another woman and a man sitting around the side of it, glasses in front of both, and between that and the drink fountain and cooler at the back of it, I realized the counter doubled as some type of confection bar.

The woman behind the counter looked over and nodded to me, her full, round face fit with a polite smile. "Howdy," she said, straightening slowly. She was big, taller than I'd realized, easily six foot, large, fleshy arms bared by a sleeveless top and apron and resting casually on her hips. "Can I get you anything?"

I pushed my fingers up the back of my head where the hair was the shortest, shaking it out to try and get some air moving. "Just filled up on pump two,” I said, matching her polite tone, unzipping my leather jacket. “And... can I get a glass of lemonade?” I shot her a polite smile. “But maybe first, the direction of the bathroom?"

She reached under the counter and came up with a thick wooden block, a key dangling from it. "Back outside, and around back. Ladies' is the one with the white door."

 

There was a washing station set up behind the bathrooms, a sink and some soap, and a little pull-chain shower that dribbled lukewarm water for about fifteen seconds, getting successively warmer each time it was pulled. It was more than enough, though, and I stripped down to my undershirt on top, scrubbing at my skin with soap and my hands and a few thin paper towels until I was pink and wet, the sun soaking into the water even as it soaked into me, molding my jeans and chaps to my legs, and I started to feel like something made of heat myself, like liquid and summer had sunk into my pores. Getting out of the city had been the right thing to do.

My lemonade was waiting on the counter when I got back inside-- although the woman and the man who had been sitting there before were gone-- full to the brim with ice, set on a napkin and soaking a ring through it. I took a drink and blinked: it was homemade. I'd gotten so used to the bottled and powdered kinds, I'd almost forgotten there was an alternative-- and drank the rest as quickly as I could without giving myself a headache.

"Fill it up?" The woman asked, holding up a pitcher, and I pushed out the glass. 'Robin,' going by the name tag on her apron.

"Please."

There was a bulletin board beside the door, next to a payphone, and I took my glass and went over to read what was posted there. A few used cars and boats for sale, a promotion for a July 4th celebration at some place called 'Jack's' and another at 'Sally's', a handful of ads for lawn mowing and a few more for painting services, and someone's cat had had kittens. There was a map as well, with 'Welcome to Goose Hollow' arced across the top and a red sticker on the building that fronted a little ring and spread of buildings dotted out along the shore of the lake, a cluster of human shapes carved into the woods like the fairy tales in the support beams holding up Mac's bar.

I found what I was looking for tucked into a bottom corner, and pulled a few off, taking them back to the counter. I spread them out, a quick shuffle by price and amenities.

"You wouldn't know if any of these were still available, would you?" I asked Robin.

"You interested?" She peered down at the assorted rental ads, all listed as available since the beginning of the month.

"Yeah," I said, draining my lemonade down to the last melting chips of ice. "I think I am."

* * *

Between Robin's knowledge of the local goings on and her store's phone we found a cottage that combined my price range with livable amenities and immediate availability, and I rode over to the nearby town, about an hour away, to get the spare key from where it was stored at the post office and leave my check in its spot. I'd given the old man who owned the cottage Ron's phone number for a character reference, but he’d said I could start my stay that night. It’d had worked out surprisingly smoothly, and I reminded myself roughly to keep my paranoia in check on the ride back to Goose Hollow.

It was finally dark by the time I pulled up to the little cottage, the long June day packing it in for a few hours at least, and mosquitoes swarmed around my face as I idled my bike up the dirt road until I found my stop. And by dark, I mean dark-- I could barely see my hand in front of my face, whatever light the moon out here might have given was hidden behind thick clouds. I left my bike parked just off the little deck with the lights on until I got the back door open and found a chain hanging from a bare, dirty bulb, my day and the miles traveled catching up to me in a dark, humid rush. I parked my bike in the shed around back just as thunder rumbled in the distance and a few fat raindrops hit my face, the water warm but the promise of something cool on the breeze that followed.

I mapped the cottage twice: a quick walk-through of the tiny bathroom, the kitchen, the open living space with a little bedroom cornered off by way of a hanging curtain, filled up with the bed and a squat dresser. I made the bed on autopilot, stripped and stood under the tiny pull-shower in the bathroom until I felt almost cool and almost clean, storm be damned, and fell into bed with my hair still wet and my spare weapon within reach on top of the dresser, rain hitting the window and bouncing off the roof.

 

I woke with the sun the next morning, pulled a pillow over my head, and went back to sleep. A few hours later I stood under the shower again until I'd washed most of the sweat from sleeping away, did my morning katas on the beach listening to the little lake-waves wash against the shore, and went for a jog.

It was a nice area now that I could see it, the dirt road long and narrow and lined on either side with overgrown weeds and grasses and the sloppy brown buzzing of stagnant water, all that remained of the storm last night. The thick woods ran along to the west of me, just out of reach, and I caught steady glimpses of the lake on the east, between the green and the cottages spaced out about every twenty, thirty feet, sometimes replaced with cleared patches of ground for trailers or tents. There weren't many signs of life-- the odd whiff of smoke or bacon or coffee, shirts flapping on a clothesline, a few broken beer bottles on one of the cracked concrete trailer grounds-- but I could imagine the busier pace on the weekends, and into July and August once school was out and summer vacation season took off in full swing.

Eventually the dirt road split off into a fork: to my right, to the west, it joined up with a paved road that looked like it was the one that would loop back around through the woods until it hit the road that led to the Daily's store and the quasi hub of the little cottage country, if I was remembering the map correctly, and to my left it veered in a slow curve until it turned into a shallow, rocky gully that washed out onto the beach and into the lake. I stopped to get my bearings, and debated which route to take, aware of the rawness in my lungs and the way my clothes were sticking to me now that I’d stopped running.

There was a flash of movement, and a rabbit darted out of the overgrowth from the woods. It kicked up some dirt and turned in mid air, and dashed off down the direction I'd come from. I tensed, scanned the dark line of the trees. What lived out here? Coyotes. Foxes. Wolves. Bobcats. Bears. 

But nothing came snarling or snorting out of the woods after its lunch, and I breathed out slowly, forcing my shoulders down and my muscles loose. I kicked a pebble from the road into the weedy ditch and roused a flurry of bird song-- when had the birds stopped singing?-- and a swarm of insects and a sad little _plop_ as the rock hit the water. Nothing with fangs or claws.

Hell, could have just have been somebody's dog, or a loud vehicle, or even someone else out for a walk or a run like me. Maybe an eagle. I glanced up; no wheeling, shadowy shape to indicate danger was winged. Jesus; for all I knew, it hadn't been anything at all-- or maybe it had actually been me, startling the rabbit out of the underbrush. I was being foolish.

...But a little caution never killed anybody, I reminded myself. And I wasn't going to charge headfirst into the woods just because something that might not even be there had startled a bunny.

I snorted and pushed my hair out of my face, jerking my head sharply. It was the lack of city getting to me, and the break from the constant observation at the station, but hell if I was going to let my leave become the paranoia punishment the Vargassis' brownnosers in the brass wanted it to be. I shook the feeling of eyes off my shoulders and started jogging on the spot, lifting my knees high to slap against the palms of my hands, and tried to get my heart rate back up. Then I turned down the gully to pick my way carefully over the water-smoothed stones and slippery weeds, glad to put a little more distance between myself and the woods. 

I stepped over some soggy driftwood and the trickle of water running onto the beach and eventually out into the lake, adding my footsteps to the scattering of prints already sunk deep in the damp sand. Dogs, probably, birds light on top where everything else was down deep and messy, even what looked like a horse. My baby sister had had a horse phase as a kid-- had collected fake-looking but expensive plastic figurines and books about girls who rode together and fought over stupid things but always stayed best friends, and brought words like Secretariat and martingale and appaloosa into my vocabulary-- but I'd always been more of the opinion that horses were better admired from the other side of a fence. 

I could see my little rental cottage down the beach if I squinted, so I started off down the curve of the shoreline, losing myself in my stride.

 

By lunchtime I was roaring hungry, the crackers and apples I'd bought the day before from Robin nothing but a snack, and I suited up to idle my bike the mile or so to the main cluster of buildings, Daily's at the front and center. Jack's and Sally's, from the dueling 4th of July events, turned out to be a diner and a bar respectively-- although, from what I could tell the diner still sold liquor and the bar still sold food, so I walked into Sally's because I'd have had to pass it to get to Jack's.

It was hot; hardly a surprise. Fans were whirring and an air conditioner was groaning and clicking away, but at best the air inside the bar could be called 'murky', and at worst 'pea soup'. Already a little overheated-- it was becoming the theme for this vacation, but extenuating circumstances aside, I wasn't yet yearning for the air conditioned bite of the station-- the sweat that popped up on my skin when I walked through the door stayed there. I scrunched my hand up through the short hair at the back of my neck and tucked the longer pieces going humidity-frizzy around my face behind my ears, plastered down from my helmet, and gave serious thought to just shaving the whole mess off.

There were a few other people there, all of five, but it was enough to make the small bar feel busy, and more than I had seen together yet in Goose Hollow. The lunch hour rush, maybe. I slid onto a chair-backed stool at the bar, the one at the end closest to the door, the rest of the counter empty save for an old man tucked in at the opposite end, and draped my jacket over the back of my seat, grabbing a menu from the pile. It was a little menu-- one page, laminated, wine and beer list on the back-- so when a glass of ice water hit the bar beside me by way of a round-faced, red-cheeked woman on the other side of the counter, I was ready to order.

"Can I get the chicken club?” I asked her. “On wheat?"

"You want a side?" the woman asked. Her voice was friendly, but she was already flicking out a little notebook, ready for business. I liked that. "Anything to drink?" She had a lot of curve, long straight hair smoothed back and tucked behind her ears, and big brown eyes that crinkled good-naturedly. "Something with ice? It's hot out today."

"Hot out every day," I said, fanning lightly around my face to get the air moving, and giving her back a bit of a smile. "Can I get fries and whatever beer's the coldest?"

"Coming right up," she said, her laugh a barky little chuckle. "Anything else?"

I scrunched my mouth and wagged some fingers in a wave 'no', shook my head; she grabbed a beer from under the counter, popped the top, and put it down next to my water. "Meal'll be about ten minutes. I don't recognize you; I'm Sally. Give me a shout if you need anything, okay?"

I nodded, tipped my bottle in thanks, and settled back to simmer in the heat, catching what breeze I could from the fans and the A\C.

Sally was true to her word and my lunch was in front of me with about a minute and a half to spare. I ate it in almost less than that, forcing myself to go slow on the piping hot fries, but gave up on any attempt not to stuff myself by the time I was half done the sandwich.

I settled back on the bar stool and started in on my beer, now that there was food in my stomach. Tipsy at quarter to two in the afternoon wasn't quite the impression I needed to make. Two of the customers left, a guy and a girl who both looked to be just on the legal side of teenager. Maybe the rush was clearing out. Or maybe not; the man at the end of the bar-- Asian, late 70s, white hair, hat next to him on the bar-- picked slowly at a piece of fish and a handful of fries, apparently content to take his time.

I was reminded of Shiro, suddenly, and his tea at the airport, and I blinked at the clarity of the memory-- then blinked it away, and took a series of short drinks from my beer, using the back-and-forth movement of bringing the bottle to my mouth to turn my head and get a look at the rest of the clientele.

Another older man, maybe mid 60s, in a booth by a window-mounted fan, empty glasses holding down the corners of his newspaper while he sipped what looked like a strawberry milkshake and worked on the crossword puzzle. A girl at a table against the back wall, a plate of half eaten nachos in front of her, long red hair done up in a messy bun, overly skinny and apparently absorbed in the magazine she was flipping through. I doubted she was 18, let alone 21, but there was a can of Sprite beside her plate, and it wasn't my jurisdiction, anyway.

"Well now," Sally said, reappearing to fill up my water while I took a long pull from my beer. "You made fast work. Can I get you anything else?"

I swapped my almost empty beer out for the water, guessing it would be cooler, and shook my head. "No thanks," I said, wiping the condensation from the glass off on my thigh. "It was good-- now I just need to let my stomach realize how much I ate."

She laughed, that little chuckle again, tapping a hand against the bar in counterpoint. "Well, stomachs aren’t always the fastest listeners, in my experience. Let’s give it a few minutes, and you tell me if it wants anything else."

I leaned back on my stool, smiled back at her. "You got it.” 

She took my plate and the mostly empty beer bottle after I nodded that it was good to go, and came back with a cloth to wipe down the bar, the man with his fish and chips and me like two bookends. "Are you renting Jerry Foss's place?"

I nodded, wry. "That's me. I'm Karrin. News travels fast-- or are you just a good guesser?"

"A bit of both," she said, smiling easily. "Robin mentioned that someone was looking to rent it, and like I said: I don't recognize you. Not too many new faces come through here, so the odds were pretty good." She shrugged, a bit of self-deprecation rolling like water off her back, and held up the pitcher to top up my drink again. The sunlight caught it through the window and it threw bits of light back across the room.

The man from the booth walked past, newspaper tucked under his arm. "Sally," he said, nodded his head as he left. Something that was almost a draft blew in, and I lifted my hair away from my face to catch it.

"Has it been this god-awful hot for weeks here too?"

"Since before Memorial day." She left the cloth on the bar, leaning over to rest on her elbows across from me. "Even worse than last year-- and the year before. Where are you visiting from? Somewhere close?"

I nodded, "Chicago," and traded questions again. "Sally. Sally's. Just a coincidence, or the Sally of?"

"The one and only," she said, laughed and spread her hands. "It's my place."

The redhead from the table at the back of the bar shuffled forward with a quick step that didn't quite bring her feet off the ground, empty plate in her hands.

"Your lunch done already?" Sally craned her head around to look at the clock on the wall behind the display of bottles. "Look at that-- two o'clock. Guess you are done."

"Yeah; I'll send Nate out," the girl said, ducking her chin as she passed us, and slid around the end of the bar to disappear into the kitchen.

"Jenna," Sally tipped her head after the girl, smiling. "She and her brother help me out. Shy as oysters though, the two of them." She winked as she said it, timed to the kitchen doors swinging open and a gangly redheaded boy coming out, balancing a plate heavily loaded with an open burger and salad. He caught the wink and blushed, chin ducking, eyes dropping. I covered my smile with a drink of water.

The boy-- Nate, I guessed-- skittered past, ears bright red, heading straight for the spot Jenna had vacated, her magazine still on the table. The door opened, a slash of sunlight blindingly bright, and blocked a second later by the shadow of a large man. He reached out a hand and caught Nate’s shoulder as he passed, pulling him up short.

I was on my feet before I thought about it-- realized I didn't have my service revolver when I reached for it, and sank back into a loose, ready stance, heart pounding, breathing slow.

"Hold up, scuttlebutt." The door closed, and the man stepped into clarity. Tall. Pushing six and a half feet, only a few inches shorter than Dresden. Wide, all muscle. Pretty gym muscle, and a lot of it. 

Pretty was a good word, actually. The guy was aggressively attractive. Dark hair that brushed his sun-kissed shoulders and shone, big dark liquid eyes, a generous mouth, age hovering somewhere around the 30-mark, body-stance playing up the old enough to know better, too young to care card. He reached over and plucked the pickle off Nate's burger, his smirk as he popped it into his mouth just a little too friendly to be entirely kosher.

“Nadine, fuck me,” Sally sighed.

I narrowed my eyes; I didn't like it. If this were my turf, I'd have stepped in. But I didn't have any authority here, and I was willing to let the locals handle it if they were going to-- I looked back at Sally. She had her arms crossed, expression flat. I didn't think she liked what was going on anymore than I did, and I took a step forward--

The guy snagged a piece of lettuce and a chunk of tomato from Nate's salad then stepped back, letting go of Nate's shoulder and slapped once at his thigh instead. "Toll payed," he said cheerfully, "off you go!"

Nate went, his head down and movements slanted forward, stepping sideways around tables and chairs until he got to his booth and made a considerable effort to disappear into the corner. I sat back down slowly, feeling my back still locked straight and rigid, the easy slouch and loose roll of the chatter with Sally long gone.

Sally moved her hands to her hips, puffed out her cheeks and a breath of air. "You should be more careful with them," she said.

The guy laughed, sucking tomato off his finger. "Nothing but a little fun," he said, and winked. “We’re all old friends.”

"It upsets them."

"They're shy." He strolled up beside me and leaned against the bar. I stayed where I was-- I could barely tell if he knew I was there, from all the regard I was getting, but I wasn't about to give ground to some dickhead because he thought he could get in my space. "And you're not their mother, so let us have our games. So-- can I get a beer?"

She reached under the counter and grabbed one without looking away, popped the top, and put the beer on the counter harder than necessary but not hard enough to be making the first move in anything. "In my place they're my responsibility. So back off." She leaned forward, her shoulders coming up-- narrow, but powerfully muscled under a little bit of padding-- and making her that slightest bit bigger.

The guy laughed and backed off, beer in one hand. "Don't hurt me, Hammer!" he said, voice full of mock-fear. He moved over to a booth with a little parting 'oooh' of theatrical fright at Sally. I tried not to tense up again. The tone of voice was way too familiar from the force-- _you're not REALLY a threat, but I'll play along, little girl_. But Sally wasn't looking angry; she was looking after the asshole with a flat, dark-eyed stare that could have pinned him to the booth if she'd kicked it up another notch. Then she looked back at me, and gave a smile-- more a signal that all was well than actual enjoyment of anything.

I relaxed, incremental stages of muscles letting go of their tension, my back rolling, still aware of where the guy was in his seat behind me. Sally nabbed her cloth and started wiping down the counter again, pausing to refill the old man's drink where he sat at the other end of the bar, still slowly working his way through his lunch. "You here for long?" She asked, picking up the conversation like we hadn't been interrupted.

I shrugged, followed her lead. "Paid for the cottage for twelve nights. I'll stay them all if nothing else comes up." I glanced at the clock; slid off my stool again. "Speaking of, I should get going. Get to town for groceries, coffee, toilet paper, beer. The usual." I smirked, friendly; the shared joke of all the little details of living. "What do I owe you?"

She scribbled a quick bill on her notepad-- included a discount for 'good company' which I made up for with a generous tip-- and she gave me another smile as I put my wallet away and took my jacket from the back of my stool. "Nice to meet you, Karrin," she said. "Come again soon."

I gave the dickhead a glance as I left-- slouched in his booth, legs and arms spread wide to claim the whole space, bottle dangling from the fingers of one hand-- and glared. Asshole.

* * *

I fell into a bit of a routine the next few days. Slept in, drank some coffee on the deck, did my katas and jogged along the beach, made myself something that more resembled lunch or breakfast depending on my mood, and rowed out in Mister Foss's little one-seater rowboat to play catch-and-release with the fish. I like fishing. Don't have time to do it often, but my dad took me and my brothers out a few times when we were kids, and I'd taken to it more than hunting, so I spent my afternoons with my feet up, drowsing on the water. The fish didn't bite much, although once in a while I saw something big moving way beneath me, down where the water was dark, so there must have been something to eat down there. I didn't have the bait or line or permit for something that big, and it didn't seem to want to bother with me, so that was fine.

Sometime by late evening I'd walk down to Sally's, nurse a couple drinks, try something new from the menu, and catch a few words and laughs with Sally between the other customers. It had been a pretty good crowd every time, and on Sunday night it took snagging a paper from the bar for me to realize it was the weekend and almost over at that, pushing midnight. I'd fallen out of my city brain faster than I'd realized I could; I'd have to tell Ron when I got back to work. He wouldn't believe me.

"More ice?" piped a voice to my right, and I looked up at Nate, his cheeks flushed almost as red as his hair, freckles standing out like orange hazard lights. He held up a pitcher of ice, the long handle of a metal spoon sticking out the top.

I held out my glass, more melted ice than whiskey sour by now. "Please."

He spooned out a careful ladle, face furrowed in concentration. "Would you like anything else? Something more to eat? Another drink?"

I raised one side of my mouth, softened the gesture to a half-smile. I’d settled my bill earlier; this drink was my one for the road. "Even if I did, I don't think you're the one who should be serving it."

He ducked his head, held up his pitcher of ice like it proved my point. "I could tell Sally though," he offered, glancing down to the other end of the bar where she was pulling a pint.

I nodded offering some middle ground. "Could you get me a glass of water?" I could stick around a while longer; if Sally minded me hogging bar space without buying anything else, she’d let me know.

"Coming right up," he said, all smiles and red cheeks, and ducked around me to dash to the kitchen door. I'd claimed my spot again, the one at the end of the counter, closest to the door. I flipped through the paper, something relatively local, from one of the towns nearby, and sipped away the last of the flavor from my drink. I was crunching through the slivery remains of an ice cube and finishing the sports section before I began to wonder about Nate and my water.

"Anything worth reading in there?" Sally asked, huffing a breath that puffed out her cheeks while she dried a glass. Her hair was swept over one shoulder, dark and gleaming.

I snorted. "Everyone wants football season to start, and the Brewers lost again. Surprise, surprise. Although, as a White Sox fan, I can’t say I’m disappointed. And can commiserate with any misery."

She chuckled, leaned over to nudge me lightly on the shoulder while she slid the glass under the bar. "Won't hold it against you. But don’t say it too loudly-- you never know who might be listening. Can’t have you starting trouble. I’d have to kick everyone else out, and then they’d know I play favorites." 

She winked, resting her elbows on the bar and tucking some loose strands of hair behind her ear, damp from the heat. Her cheeks were red, sweat glowing on her arms and chest, on the curve of her breasts bared by her tank top, pulled low where she bent forward. The fans whirred and clunked away in the corners of the room, behind the bar, and I looked up to find her watching me, dark eyes squinting and amused. She glanced away, flicked her gaze across the crowd, then back, tracking down the line of my shoulders, my chest, back up to my hair. I smiled-- innocent enough for it to have been nothing, frankly enough for it to be an invitation.

She stood up straight, tucked a bra strap back up from where it had slid down her shoulder, and touched her hand to my glass. "You want more to drink?"

I frowned. "Nate went to get me some water. A while ago." I looked to the kitchen doors, and she did too-- and straightened, back going rigid. "Excuse me," she said, and disappeared through the doors, moving with the same squared off shoulders and kinetic force as a professional football player.

I pinched my lips, sucked once at my teeth, and slid off my stool. I'd made it about half a foot closer to the kitchen doors when they came flying back open. The asshole from my first visit backed out, making a T with his hands, laughing. "Time out! Call a time out, ref!"

Sally followed him out, teeth bared in a grimace, angry, her body a single, solid column. "That's it," she said, her voice low and strained. "Get out." Her hands flapped once in front of her, pushing him away, then formed fists and went to her hips. "I mean it; I want you gone. Get out. This is my property, and you're not welcome here."

"Hey-- don't take it so personal!" He flashed his smile around the bar, big teeth catching the dim light, shook his head just enough to make his hair ripple and gleam. "I’m just having some fun with the kids. I’m their friend!" He raised his hands like a rockstar working a crowd, gesturing towards himself with his fingers, egging them on.

It didn't get much of a response. I was willing to bet that the small crowd here was mostly local, and mostly used to their village idiot. A few eyes followed him, but with enough appreciation that my more uncharitable side (it's all uncharitable, don't let anyone tell you different) was perfectly willing to chalk that up to the way his pretty muscles flexed and shone under his sleeveless top, and the way the bar lights found his face, the line of his jaw. He practically glowed. I swear, I thought I'd never meet a bigger drama queen than Dresden.... 

I edged forward again, circled around so I was behind them, almost behind the bar, watched Sally straighten her back and raise her shoulders and make herself bigger, breathing angry and hard. "Last time I’m saying it, Leon. Get. Out."

His nostrils flared, and he said low enough that only Sally and I could have heard him, "You shouldn't have done that, Sally. That's not polite."

"Neither is abusing my hospitality," she said, voice just as quiet, almost indistinguishable under the rasp. “And if you dare--”

He cut her off, shaking his hair out, holding his hands up in surrender. "The lady's spoken, folks! Show's over! That's a wrap!"

He left with surprising speed, not staying to put up a fuss, sweeping out of the little bar like he had a red carpet unrolling in front of him, waving and calling goodbye to the rest of the patrons, bowing before he shut the door.

"Here's your water," Nate said, drawing in beside me, voice quiet. I took the glass from him, slippery and cold in my hands, and he disappeared back into the kitchen, Jenna's red-splotched face visible for just a second, peeking through the gap between the doors.

Sally was still for a moment, breathing tight and hard through her nose before she puffed her cheeks out and slapped her hands together once, driving the heel of one hand into the palm of the other, and stalked forward to get behind her bar, grumbling under her breath. “Nadine, fuck me.”

Nadine was a busy lady. 

I slid back onto my stool as she made quick work refilling glasses and jotting down a late order for some fries, ducking back into the kitchen with it. When she came back out, she was calmer, wiping her hands on a cloth. I caught her gaze, and tipped my head toward the kitchen, letting my expression ask my question.

"Hnng," she said, reminding me of another bartender, flapping her hands once. She slid onto the stool beside me, stood up to reach over the bar and snag a bottle of beer, and sank back down with a groan, smacking the bottlecap off on the counter corner.

I laughed: "That’s how the professionals do it, huh?” and leaned back on my stool to shake out my hair, the hot nape of my neck catching on the weak breeze from the fans. It had cooled down a little, the burning of the sun replaced with the deep, wet heat of nighttime humidity, and-- I was perfectly happy to believe-- because a great bag of hot air had left the premises.

Sally snorted, tipped her head back and drank half the bottle in one go, then gave me a smile, heavy and knowing, and something unfurled in my belly. Yeah, I could work with this. 

It was still too hot to move fast, and she stayed slow, killing the bottle and standing up to get back to work.

She refilled my water, a crushed lime from the pitcher pouring in. I laid the glass against my forehead for a while, watched her work. The crowd was getting quieter, thinner-- enough that I didn’t feel conspicuous nursing an ice water. The cicadas droned outside. The A\C droned inside.

Jenna came out of the kitchen with the fries, her face pale but the blotches gone. Sally plunked a pitcher down beside me, crushed up ice and a few inches of water, and put a full bowl of peanuts beside it, leaving me to it while she circled the place, tucked in chairs and wiped down tables, teased some of the other holdouts who hadn’t trickled away to the pumpkin patch when the clock hit midnight. I followed her with my eyes, and she let me know she noticed, giving enough dark-eyed glances back to make sure I kept looking, and walking with enough rolling swagger to make sure what I kept looking at were her hips. 

There were few enough bodies in the bar besides me by the time one o’clock hit that last call came as a tap on the shoulder-- I watched curiously as she shooed them out, conspicuously skipping me. She checked the door closed with her hip, flipped the switch for the Open sign outside, and strolled back behind the bar. 

“You don’t let me go until I tip you?” I said, smiling lazily. 

“You’ll want to tip me after this. Personal supply.” She went back behind the bar, pulled out a fresh, frosted glass and a mason jar from one of the fridges, full to the brim with liquid and halved lemons, and a little bowl of strawberries. She muddled, poured-- handed me the glass, her eyes sparkling.

I took a careful sip. Lemonade, sweet and just sour enough. Wild strawberries. The afterburn of something I could barely taste, warm in my belly, on my tongue. Vodka. I angled my eyebrows at her. “Keep the good stuff for yourself, huh?” 

She rolled her shoulders in a liquid sort of shrug, sat down next to me again, turned so her knees brushed mine. “I’m not above sharing.” She held out her hand and we traded the glass back and forth until it was done. She got the last drink. I leaned forward, pressed my hand to the glass and hers, let the moment stretch. She ran her other hand up my thigh, slid off her stool and pressed her body in between my legs, reached out and put the glass on the bar, her hair falling around us like a curtain as she leaned in--

Someone came to a fast enough stop on the old wood floor that their shoes squeaked. We broke apart, Sally straightening, giving me a good natured grimace before looking past my shoulder. I craned my neck around, and Nate went red.

“Sorry,” he said. “Kitchen’s clean. We can just go.” 

“No you can’t,” Sally said, and pulled away with a squeeze to one of my thighs. “I said I was driving you home, I’ll be driving you home. Grab your stuff.” He scuttled back into the kitchen, and she turned back to me, expression apologetic. “Sorry, Karrin.”

I waved off her apology and slid from my stool, checking my watch. “It’s late,” I said. “I really should go. Not that I’m not having a good time.”

“We’re closed on Mondays.” She pulled out her notebook and scribbled something down, tearing the sheet free and passing it to me. “Come see me?” 

I looked down-- it was her address, and the sort of directions that happen when you only have a few roads. “Yeah,” I couldn’t help the smile. “Yeah.”

“You going to be okay to get home?”

I waved a hand. “I walked, and your vodka wasn’t _that_ good. I’ll be fine.”

“I can drop you off if you want.” The twins bustled out of the kitchen, each with a backpack slung over their skinny shoulders. “There’s room in the truck.”

I shook my head-- because right now I could probably use the walk-- and she let it be, stepping back to duck down behind the bar once more and coming up with a bag crossed over her shoulders and a suede jacket draped over it.

I grabbed my own jacket from the back of my stool, and fished a business card out of my wallet, scribbling my cell number on the back. “If you need to get a hold of me.” 

She smiled, bright and pleased enough to make me really, really regret that I wasn’t going home with her right then and there, and tucked the card away in her jacket pocket. “All right, everybody. Let’s go, let’s go.” She shooed us towards the door and we went.

* * *

The night was hot and sluggish, the wind off the lake not getting through the window-screens. Humidity like walking through a wet mattress. I’d picked up a headache on the walk back from Sally’s, so I killed the light as soon as I turned it on, stripping the bed to the sheets and sprawling out to make the most of the creaking ceiling fan.

The insects outside were keeping up a steady buzz that was crap for white noise, but I drifted off halfway-- wedged in humid half-dreams that got interrupted when the sheet tangled my ankle and I kicked it away without really waking up. It was four in the morning when I did wake up, heart pounding-- the cabin was still a sauna and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

I get pretty used to ambulance sirens, even in my corner of Chicago. This one seemed distorted, slowed down by the thick air. Straining. 

Goose Hollow was a small town, but that didn’t mean there weren’t enough stupid ways to have an accident. Some tourist might have come down with heat exhaustion, if they hadn’t prepared for the early summer. A lot of the faces I saw at Sally’s were older than me, some older than my parents. It could have been a heart attack, a stroke, a bad fall in the middle of the night. The wear of life and hot weather. 

I rolled over. Tried to sit up. Didn’t. Frowned. I was groggy enough to have taken sleeping pills. I squinted; thought about it. I hadn’t. The heat itself was heavy, pushing me down. I wanted to kick it off like covers off the bed, but it was stronger than I was, pulling me back to sleep. 

I pushed myself up and made it to the bathroom, half dozing as I walked, turned on the tap and stuck my head under for a drink. Let the water, tepid, soak my hair. I was going to splash it on my face, but I was falling asleep there, hunched over, and just let it run down my cheeks while I staggered back to the bed instead.

I felt like I’d been punched in the jaw. The stomach. Like my joints should have been sore and bruised. Like summer had reached out and smacked the ground, and I’d been caught in the blow. I fell asleep as soon as I hit the mattress, deeply this time, and didn’t wake up until the sun was high in the sky.

* * *

It was too hot to run by the time I rolled out of bed. I couldn’t prove it, but I’d swear it was the hottest day yet. I almost skipped my coffee even, but I could feel the bruised edges of a hangover in my temples, or maybe I was just dehydrated, so I hissed and tiptoed my way across the little cottage deck until I found enough shade to sit in and drained my cup, and then a second serving for good measure. I hadn’t packed a bathing suit before I left, but I pulled on a sports bra and a pair of shorts, and went out and splashed around in the lake until I smelled like weeds and my toes were pruny. I’m a strong swimmer, was a summer lifeguard in high school, but in the lake I forgot about lanes and strokes and went for the bottom, out deep where the water was cold and the light was green and came up gasping.

I strung my wet clothes up on the little laundry umbrella and rinsed off under the shower and then made myself a sandwich, and because it was already mid afternoon, decided I’d waited long enough, pulled my leather jacket on over my tank top, and idled my bike over to Sally’s place. 

Sally didn’t live too far from her bar, less than a mile going the opposite way from me down the main road, and then ten yards or so back into the trees, her old pickup truck parked beside it. I might have missed the dirt driveway if it weren’t for the landmarks she’d written down for me, and the County Sheriff's car parked partway up it.

I passed the driveway and borrowed another a few yards up the road to turn back around, idling slowly to make I wasn’t surprising anyone, and came to a stop in clear view of the house. The Sheriff saw me coming-- straightened, the little laptop she’d been tapping at going to the passenger's seat, door popping and she got out causally, posture loose, meeting me halfway to the house.

“Afternoon,” she said, unclipping her sunglasses from her uniform top and sliding them on. “Can I help you with something, ma’am?” There was a certain tone in her voice, and I could translate neatly from cop-speak. This was going to be a long day. She’d really rather I didn’t hang around and need watching. Her name tag glinted in the sun, A Payton.

“Ma’am. Everything okay here?” I copped right back at her. 

She gave me a measuring look. “And you are?” 

“Officer Murphy. Chicago PD. But I’m on vacation.” I took the sheet of directions out of my pocket. “I was coming to visit a friend. Sally Penn?” 

“Known Sally long?” 

“About five days,” I said. It wasn’t an admission. It was the truth, and I wasn’t going to prance around it. 

She pursed her lips. “I’m afraid your friend’s in the hospital, Officer.” 

I thought of the sirens last night. “What happened?”

“Neighbor phoned in some shouting and noise early this morning. The front door had been kicked in and she was unconscious when the responding officer arrived.” 

I looked past her shoulder, to the front porch-- then looked closer. The shape of it was there: the support beams, the deck, the stairs, the roof frame. But the details... the front door was more not a door than a door. Someone hadn’t just kicked it open; they really had kicked it in. All of it. The front windows were shattered, and the wood around them and around the door frame was swollen and twisted and sagging. It looked waterlogged and rotten, splintering out. It hardly looked like it should be able to support the weight of the house; I wondered if it was even safe to go in. A shiver crawled up my spine. To get damage like that... well, I wasn’t sure how you’d do it. Prolonged spray from a firehose? Explosives? ...Magic? 

“Do you have any ID I could see, Officer?”

I fished out my wallet and handed her my drivers licence, and then a business card. “Badge is in Chicago ”

“Thank you.” She recorded my information and handed my licence back, tucked the business card away.

“Was anything taken?” Had there been much enter with all that break? Last time I’d seen a B&E scene like this, no one had been hurt, luckily, and the only thing taken had been an old family heirloom... which had then been used to kidnap a fairy bigwig. Harry had gotten a little hysterical trying to explain the details to me; I still didn’t know enough of the nitty gritty to be comfortable, but he’d gone pink and babbly, and I’d been worried the giggles had been about to start. I’d just had to look at it like dealing with the abduction of any foreign dignitary. But that probably wasn’t what had happened here. 

“We’re working on that. The house is a little torn up. Might have been trying to defend herself.” She flipped open a notebook. “Did you see Sally last night?”

I nodded. “At her bar. We left around one thirty, a little before.” 

“Together?”

It was well done: by-rote enough to smooth the way for any possibly contentious answer, with just enough inflection to tell me what she was really asking, just enough disinterest to tell me she didn’t really care. Maybe I was Sally’s type. “We left the bar together, but I went back to my rental alone. She was going to drive her staff home.”

“That would be Jenna and Nathaniel Cob?” 

I nodded. “Jenna and Nate.” 

“How did Sally seem last night? 

“Seemed fine. A little annoyed, there was a tough causing trouble, but she didn’t seem too worried.” 

“Tall young man. White, dark hair and eyes. Answers to Leon. I’m aware of him.” I knew her tone. He wasn’t popular. Probably every cop who’d ever driven through Goose Hollow was aware of him. “Did he say anything? Make any threats?” 

“He was in the kitchen-- hassling the twins, I think, but I didn’t see that-- and then left when Sally ran him out.” I went over the evening again in my head. “He didn’t say anything actionable.” I gave a brief rundown of the conversation. She scribbled.

“Thanks. How long are you going to be in town, if there’s anything else to ask?” 

“The next week. I’m staying in Jerry Foss’s cabin.” I pointed down the street. “Number 37.”

“Thanks.” She clicked her pen shut and closed the notebook. “You should probably head back there.” It was a kind dismissal, but a dismissal all the same. “I think visiting hours will be over soon, but if you want to see your friend, she’s at the hospital in town.” It didn’t really soften the blow, but it let me know we were on good footing. 

“I’ll stay out of your hair,” I said with a curt nod. “Would you let me know if you find anything out?” 

She waited a second then nodded, once, brisk. It was a favor. Not the biggest one to ask, but I was still banking on a bit of cop fraternity. A risky move, since she didn’t even have proof I was cop. Business cards aren’t hard to fake. 

“Thanks. I’ve got my cell. Let me give you the number.” She wrote it on the back of my card-- reminding me of how I’d written it down for Sally just last night-- then tucked it back away in her notebook, shoving pen and paperwork into her breast pocket.

I nodded to her, and then startled alert as her CB radio crackled-- it was a second before I remembered that I wasn’t on duty, and it wasn’t for me. 

“Sheriff?” the voice on the radio said. “Get a load of this. Got the results back on Ms. Penn. Frostbite--” 

The sheriff leaned quickly through her open window, grabbing the handset. “Rogers, can it for a second. I’ll get back to you. “ 

I thanked her again and got on my bike, idling back towards my rental.

* * *

I stopped at Daily’s general store on my way, to flip through the phonebook at the payphone for the number for the hospital, and to get my bearings. I had to figure out how I felt about this. 

It wasn’t my case; I wasn’t informed or involved enough to respond like it was. I was one of the bystanders. Probably not much of a suspect, as far as Sheriff Payton was concerned, but not cleared off the list, either. Just a friend of the victim. 

But I was a cop, too. I wasn’t going to get sappy and stupid about it-- I wasn’t a cop to the bone or anything. It was in the family but it wasn’t in my blood; I knew how to be and do lots of other things at the same time. But I’d been a cop for years, and I was good at it. And it got into you, changed how you looked at things. A lot of jobs did that. A lot of things. Hell, I’d put my time in with SI, and look what that was doing to me. Jumping at goddamn shadows. 

I didn’t know how to step back in the face of an assault, how to focus on the anger and injustice and take no action. How to be upset without looking for answers. Because Sally was becoming a friend. And yesterday I’d kissed her, had been ready to do a whole lot more than that. And today she was in the hospital. It didn’t make sense, it wasn’t fair, and it was tripping just a little too close to my ‘spooky’ wires.

I tried to talk myself real fast out of wondering if the Vargassis had been behind it. Because if I did, I’d start to wonder how they’d known where I was. And that would have meant they’d had me followed-- in person, by tracker, by a network of dirty cops and dirtbags between here and Chicago. There were no trackers on my bike; I was sure of that. I checked it regularly as it was. Maybe they’d found out when Foss had phoned in my references. Carmichael wouldn’t tell them, but the call could have been intercepted. Overheard. But someone would have noticed another new face in the crowd around here. The locals had known all about me in less than 24 hours.

No. I jerked my mind away from those thoughts. That was just a little too paranoid. 

I copied out the hospital’s number and address on a napkin I’d grabbed from the counter, and tore a hole through it with the tip of the pen halfway through. 

...So I was a little upset. That was fair; that was more than fair. Someone who could have been a friend had been hurt, and possibly badly. Someone had torn up the front of her house to get to her, and probably the rest of it too. And it was setting off my oversensitive ‘weird shit’ chimes like shower steam and my nan’s old smoke detector. I have good instincts for this stuff; I really didn’t want to be right, here. 

So what was I going to do about it? Let the professionals do their job, if I was smart. This wasn’t my case, and it sure as hell wasn’t my jurisdiction, and I had no proof it was anything but a standard B&E, magic need not apply.

I could start with going to see Sally. Like a friend. Not a cop.

The shop door opened. I noticed the scuttling first, the awkward shuffling, and then the hair. “Twins.”

Nate and Jenna froze halfway through the door, blinking at me. 

“This ice cream melts, you’re buying it!” Robin called out a moment later, cheerful, but it worked-- the twins lurched forward, letting the door swing shut behind them on the escaping air conditioning. 

“Miss Murphy!” Nate said, drawing up short, almost tipping forward with that amazing teenage grace that lanky kids have. “Did you hear about Sally?” 

“Yeah,” I shoved my napkin in my pocket, turning to give the twins my full attention. “You guys okay?” 

Jenna jerked a hesitant nod. “We had to talk to the Sheriff. She won’t let us in the house to get anything for Sally.” 

Hopefully she hadn’t even let them near the house. I understood about why you need to keep crime scenes a little sterile. The more outside variables you brought in, the more you were risking when it came to finding your perpetrators and holding them accountable later. But more than that, I just wanted the kids not to have seen the destruction. I waved the twins closer so that we weren’t causing so much of a scene. 

“If there’s something she needs, medication, the cops need to know,” I said, dropping it to an inside-voice, getting myself into a nice, procedural headset so I couldn’t start thinking about last winter’s break-in again. “Is there something like that?” 

Two out-of-synch headshakes. 

“She should have--” Nate stammered to a stop.

“It would help,” Jenna tried. “I mean. Some of her stuff.” 

“What kind of stuff?” 

“Stuff,” Nate mumbled.

“Anything in particular?” 

Two mouths snapped shut, and there was a silence loud enough I could hear it over the general store-chatter around us. I recognized it. 

Harry Dresden, when serving as one of the department’s contractors-- ex-contractor, since the hammer came down, I guess-- occasionally clammed up this way. I could translate this brand of silence perfectly. ‘There’s something really important. We don’t think we’re allowed to tell you. It’s for your own good you don’t know. You wouldn’t understand.’ 

So much for getting my head out of last winter’s break-in.

I kept my face blank, it’s a skill every rookie learns by the end of their first week on the street, and told myself to stop being ridiculous. Maybe I almost had needed this leave, because I was seeing monsters everywhere. It was beyond ridiculous of me to assume that any secret Nate and Jenna thought they needed to keep for Sally was supernatural, it was damn irresponsible. A couple strange things about a case did not make it ghosts and vampires and fairies. ...And then the image of that shattered porch flashed in front of my mind’s eye and I couldn’t sustain the good common sense. 

I took a breath to try to unlock some of the tension that was starting in my neck again, and let my gaze drift to the tiny little pharmacy section of the store. I was going to need to stock up on aspirin for this. I could tell. Some vacation.

“Stuff. Okay. Anything else you think she might want? Anything I can tell the hospital or the police about specifically?” 

Two more headshakes. 

“Have you seen her?”

“No,” Jenna said, tugging on an ear. “She wasn’t stable enough for visitors today, but we called an hour ago and they said friends and family could come in tomorrow.”

“Does she have any family? Are they in the area?”

Jenna shrugged, jerky, trying to find the part of the ground that was the most interesting to stare at. “Only some cousins far away. They’re not close.”

Nate had gone silent. His face was wan-- both of them looked a little pale, freckles standing out in relief against their sallow complexions. They were scared. No, scratch that. Terrified. I couldn’t blame them. I hadn’t been here long, but I’d seen that Sally was as much a mentor as an employer. 

“How about you guys? Do you have family around here? This kind of stuff is scary,” I said, gentling my voice as much as I could, trying to keep the tension out, not to hint that I was a little worried myself. 

“Mom’s out of town,” Nate said quietly. “Sally’s been. You know. Not _babysitting_.” He looked like he was going to cry. 

I glanced over at the pharmacy section again, partly to give him some privacy, partly because my temples were starting to throb. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. These kids were young. Maybe eighteen. Maybe nineteen. Maybe seventeen. But whatever-teen it happened to be, I’d had rookies not much older who made them seem like toddlers. “You guys able to tell your mom what’s going on?” 

“We left a message,” Jenna said, soft enough I could barely hear her. “She’s been moving around so it might be a while before she gets it.”

I nodded, sucked a little at my teeth. “Anyone else in town you can stay with or talk to?” I didn’t ask about Dad; didn’t sound like he was in the picture. They’d bring him up if he was.

Jenna gave a jerky shrug. “Not really. Almost everyone’s really nice, but Mom and Sally have been friends for ages.”

“Not many people live here all year,” Nate said. “We don’t know them as well. We’ll be okay,” he added. “We’re just worried about Sally.”

“Anything like this ever happen before?”

Two headshakes, and Nate gave a long, wet snuffle. “She just-- we’re really worried,” Jenna said. She looked away and tugged on Nate’s hand. “We should get our stuff and get back. Thanks, Miss Murphy.”

They moved fast around the little store; I watched them as I fetched the biggest bottle of aspirin Robin sold, a liter bottle of water, and then a KitKat bar. They stocked up, grabbing bags of chips, a salad mix, some bottled drinks, shampoo, toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap, some deodorant, and shuffled out of the store before I’d settled on what type of beer I wanted. 

They were waiting for me at my bike, arms wrapped around their bags, feet shuffling in the dirt. 

“Were you going to go see Sally tomorrow?” Jenna asked. “Or another day?”

“It’s just that we probably can’t,” Nate said. “And we think. We were thinking.” They shared a pained, nervous look. 

I sighed. “You want me to get her something. From her house. You want me to break into an active crime scene and get something specific that you’re worried about.” I started loading beer cans into one of my saddlebags. “But you’re not going to tell me what or why.”

“It’s good to have things with you. Things that remind you of home,” Nate said, at the same time Jenna started with:

“What if whoever broke in _took_ something? Would you be able to tell?” They stopped and looked around guiltily.

“Would help if I knew what I was looking for,” I said. Their guilty looks turned ill, and I sighed, ready to tell them no. They had no idea what they were asking me to do. Instead, I thought about the ruin of Sally’s porch again, and what came out was: “All right. I’ll see what I can do. But you guys are going to owe me answers.” They looked even sicker after that, wanner than ever, but met my gaze and held it when I turned it on each of them in turn-- not wizards, good to know-- and gave jerky little nods, mumbling agreements. 

“We have a key,” Jenna said, and stumbled forward, tugging a lanyard from around her neck and offering it to me. “Here.” Her freckles went all the way to her cuticles. They hadn’t seen the house, then. Or they’d have known I didn’t need one.

I shoved it into a pocket anyway. I didn’t need to tell them. “Okay. You two look after each other.” I glared at them a little and they shuffled, and I tried to soften my gaze. “And come get me if there’s trouble. You know where I’m staying?”

They nodded again, and I called myself a fool, and drove off. Kept in the dark while up against things other people thought I didn’t need to know about; it was like I hadn’t even left Chicago at all.

* * *

I waited until it had been dark for a while-- damn near midnight, this time of year-- before I putted back over to Sally’s place, reminding myself the whole way of all the laws I was breaking, how stupid I had to be to even be doing this, on vacation, out of my jurisdiction, and all the ways I could be caught, arrested, fined, and royally fucked. My bike was loud in the darkness, the man-made engine chewing up the humid night sounds and spitting them out. It would have been a lot quieter to walk, but this whole thing was starting to feel hinky enough that I wanted the option of a fast getaway. 

The Sheriff’s car was gone-- I did a slow loop of the street, putting down to the end of it and back, just to make sure it wasn’t parked off further away for surveillance, then turned down Sally’s driveway, hoping her neighbors weren’t on high alert after the excitement of last night. There was some police tape strung up over the little front steps and the splintered remains of the front door, and some caution signage set up around the perimeter. I tried to push the image of the whole place collapsing on me out of my head.

It was worse up close. No wonder the Sheriff had been guarding the front door. Or what was left of it, at least. Which were three twisted hinges and a bunch of kindling. I was still getting uneasy flashbacks to the December case. And that wasn’t helping my attempts to convince myself that this wasn’t supernatural. The weight of my backup firearm was heavy in my boot; I suddenly wished I’d brought my shoulder holster with me. Hell, I suddenly wished I’d brought Dad’s old Colt 1911 with me. 

I pressed into the shadows beside the doorway and waited for a moment, chin ducked, until I could hear the outside of my body better than the inside. The stink of the wood. Definitely some rot. Cicadas and crickets. Leaves in the barely there wind. I waited a few minutes, to make sure my heartbeat was slow, my breathing easy, no louder than the faint breeze. I slipped on my leather driving gloves and made a mental apology to Sheriff Payton as I bent up the police tape to go in.

I waited inside in the dark, hot and still and humid despite the new ventilation. Nothing from outside, no alarm, no lights at the neighbor's places. No one demanding I freeze, put my hands up, and identify myself. Holding my breath, I lit my handlight, hiding and reflecting it with my palm, spilling a dim glow across the floor.

Whoever had broken in had been thorough about ransacking the place; the splinters of a coffee table lay jagged in a mess of random household detritus. Books, thrown from shelves, some with pages shredded, lying half-sodden in stagnant puddles of water. ...Lots of water. It hadn’t rained last night. Felt like a storm but none had come. Had a pipe been one of the casualties? Maybe my earlier thoughts about the firehose had been right.

I wasn't going to try to sort through much of that mess. The cops would have already been over all this; if there was a clue in there, they'd picked it up and put it in evidence. I was looking for... the things they wouldn't be looking for.

This was what Special Investigations had been put together for, back before we had a wizard contractor-- and when he'd been blacklisted, and our job had become more about covering things up than turning up answers, we’d gone back to doing things the hard way, finding pieces that didn't connect. Little impossibilities, unexplainable things. 

Like the way the doorframe hadn't been kicked in as much as it looked like it had exploded. I crouched by it, running a gloved finger across the warped wood; it had split from the inside out, some huge pressure inside the wood snapping it open, leaving wide cracks all the way up its length.

I could think of a few ways someone with the right skills could do this. I'd learned a lot in the past few years-- from Harry Dresden, from a local organization I worked with. If you ruled out magic, though, the explanations got thin on the ground. Some kind of explosive, maybe... but the wood wasn't charred. In fact-- I risked more direct light-- it was slightly damp. The threshold was water stained. That was fresh, too.

I risked full light, sweeping my handlight all the way up the frame. The soggy wood gleamed. Some of it gleamed more....

They probably hadn't noticed it in the sunlight, but under an angled flashlight beam, the symbols that crawled up the cracked wood stood out in relief. They'd been written in something clear and durable. Nail polish, maybe, or lacquer. Old, but not faded, they'd held up a while-- until the wood they were layered on had blown out under them.

I picked my way across the soggy mess of the living room, over to the windows. More of the same symbols, intact now. Nothing I'd seen before. Angular geometric symbols, hash-marks intersected with sharp straight lines. A dusty bundle of twigs tied in a ribbon was concealed above the top of the frame. Birch or oak, maybe. Some of the OLEBES had those; they were a mild form of magical protection.

So Sally had wards. And something had come through them. Violently.

Well, it was nice to know that my paranoia wasn’t misguided. That’d go over well in court. If whoever had busted up the house didn’t turn their sights on me first.

The rest of the house about painted the picture of a mild magical talent. There was technology; it was old, the refrigerator straight out of the fifties, the window air conditioner probably almost my age. Bundles of twigs at all the external entrances, runes painted even around the air vents. A wood-burning stove and a fireplace, well kept, and well used. And warded.

I checked in the fridge cautiously-- I've seen some of the stuff Harry keeps around his house-- but it was all food. Vegetables, sandwich stuff. A tupperware container full of soup, some type of chowder, it looked like. Some smoked salmon. A stacked pile of whole fish in the freezer, in zip-bags instead of store packaging. From the lake, I was willing to bet.

Not much cookware; what there was a mix of cheap aluminum stuff and old heritage copper. That bugged me for a while; I carried it with me into the rest of her house, up the narrow, well-worn stairs to the second floor, around more puddles, past the dents and dings and chunks torn out of the wall. Then I stepped into her bedroom and forgot about it. 

The first thing I saw was the bed, and how it had been flipped half on its side. The next thing I saw was the closet. There was a normal folding door, on the ground, torn right off the hinges, thin wood splintered around a flimsy little lock. Left up was the remains of a second enforced security door with a heavy lock, some sort of warped metal, busted open. 

Maybe she’d had a rifle in here. This setup was cheaper than a gun safe-- not nearly as effective, though. Maybe she kept jewelry in here. 

I skimmed my flashlight over the closet and couldn’t bring myself to be surprised that there was a double-row of the angular ward symbols across the frame-- easier to spot, because they’d been woodburned in, inlaid with what looked like silver. That wasn’t less expensive than a gun safe....

The wood around them was blackened; when I touched it with my glove, the ash smeared away, flakes of charred wood falling. I whipped my hand back before I could start to imagine the heat that could have eaten through hardwood.

The padlock had been a deadbolt. Brass. The bolt itself had shattered like a stick of chalk, half of it sticking out of the frame, and the lock mechanism had just... popped.

I’d seen this kind of damage before. There were some sprays you could use to freeze a middle-grade lock, get it cold and brittle enough that one stiff hammer-blow would break it apart-- but that worked on small locks, padlocks. Not big solid old antique deadbolts. 

The symbols along had gotten hot; really hot. The lock had gotten really cold. Sally had had something in this closet that got easily three or four times the protection of the rest of her house, had secured it so that it had survived better than her own front door. 

The closet had been ransacked, parkas and sweaters thrown to the floor, jeans, flannel shirts and button downs torn and scattered, a dress or two, some dress pants and shoes spread this way and that. No telling if it was gone, whatever it was. Whatever the looter had been after, what the twins wanted me to find.

I did a last sweep of the house; things had been thrown around, but nothing else had been turned inside out like the closet. And nothing else had wards like it had either. Whatever the twins were worried about, whatever the looter had been after... that was the place. Didn’t help me much-- I had no idea what it was, still. If it had been taken. Where to look for it if it hadn’t been. What I was walking into and how far in I was already. 

I killed my flashlight and waited inside the front door for my eyes to adjust, listening again for noises outside; when I was confident I was alone, I slipped back out under the police tape, and crept back down to my bike. 

The last of the adrenaline didn’t wear off until the sky was starting to lighten, and I’d gotten maybe three hours of sleep by the time visiting hours started and I could go see Sally.

* * *

The sign on the door said: 'Special Precautions: Visitors Should Check With A Nurse.'

The nurse who was escorting me had already filled me in, and vetted me for jewelry. I'd left my keys and my jacket with its heavy zippers up at the front desk as a precaution. Still, he didn't open the door.

"Do you mind answering a few questions?"

I shook my head.

"Do you know the patient very well?"

"Not for long; I'm just visiting the area. I went into her bar a few times." It wasn't the answer he'd wanted to hear, obviously. "I can give you the contact number of her employees, if that would help."

"That would be good." He paused. "Is there anything you think the doctor should know about her? About the circumstances around her accident?"

I shook my head. "All I know is that they found her unconscious after a break-in. Her house was pretty ripped up, I thought the burglar must have knocked her out."

"And you don't think she would have been exposed to any unusual substances?"

I've been in the police department a long time. I was a peace officer before I could drink. I know some of the language they use in these cases, looking out from behind the edge of HIPAA and trying to figure out what the hell was wrong without violating their patient's privacy. It's a hard line to walk. I shook my head again. "Like I said, I don't know her well-- but she didn't show signs of having anything like that around."

In a simpler world, that conversation would have gone like this:

'The doctor found or saw something weird. Is your friend on drugs?'

'To the best of my knowledge my friend is not on drugs.'

But it's not a simple world. I know that.

Still, I've been in the police department for a long time. I've been in SI a long time, too. I've learned to translate that set of questions. It means the doctor found wounds they couldn’t explain, got labwork that made no sense, or just flat out didn't think what they're looking at was possible. Because far too often in the past few years it's been nothing as simple as an overdose or a drug allergy or a new strain of the flu.

Waldo Butters, a mortician in Chicago, unofficial member of SI, and good friend, knows that better than anybody, working where he does. When a panhandler dies of what looks a hell of a lot like pure fear. When bodies turn up with what look like animal bites in the middle of downtown. When people starve to death on a half-hour jog in the park.

The nurse let me in and stood casually by the door, pretending to read some paperwork.

I sat down by the bed.

Sally looked wan, like she'd been out for a lot longer than overnight. The bedrails were padded with those foam sheets they wrap Ikea shelves in, and she'd been changed into paper clothes and socks. There was definitely frostbite on her arms and neck. You work a beat on the street for a few Chicago winters, you learn to recognize it.

"Hey," I murmured. "They told me to talk to you. Said you might hear me. How about you get up on your feet, huh? Where am I going to drink now?"

I took her hand, the one without an IV tube fed into the wrist; her fingers were limp against my palm, cool.

"I hope you get better soon. They're looking into it, okay? The right people are looking into this. Someone will find out who did this to you. And I'm looking after the twins, too. I won't let them burn the bar down while you're out."

I talked to her for a while longer, random chatter. My take on the baseball season, mostly. It was a hard little chair and my tailbone was getting sore by the time I said goodbye and let the nurse escort me out.

It had been hot when I’d arrived, but after the hospital air conditioning, the parking lot was an oven, the sad little tree I’d parked my bike under not doing anything to shield it from the heat. I straddled the seat gingerly, pulling on my heavy jacket and immediately starting to sweat, and then all the hair on the back of my neck stood up. 

I snapped my head up and looked around, turned the ignition just in case-- and Leon Known to Local Authorities, strolled up like a model on a moving sidewalk, a paper-wrapped bouquet of flowers in his hands.

“Hey there,” he said, smiling disarmingly. “I thought I recognized you. You visiting Sally?” My eyes narrowed; he continued on, apparently oblivious. “Isn’t it a shame? I can barely believe it; it’s such a small, safe community. I would never have thought something like this would happen. I hope it doesn’t give you a horrible opinion of us. We’ve barely met, by the way; call me Leon.” He stuck his hand out and I pulled my helmet on. 

“I’ve seen you at Sally’s place,” he added, recovering smoothly, turning his outstretched hand into a vague gesture in the direction of Goose Hollow. “I didn’t realize you were such good friends. It’s really great of you to visit her. I’d heard she was still unconscious; how’s she doing?”

I grunted, a hint of ‘you know how it is’ but mostly ‘I have no desire to talk to you, asshole,’ with a touch of ‘so scram before I help you along.’ 

He didn’t take the hint though, just paused long enough to flash his white smile at me, big dark eyes trying to find mine through my helmet’s dark faceplate, beautiful and limpid and earnestly swearing he was as sensitive as a poet. “I joke around with Sally, we’ve had our spats, but-- this, it’s awful. We go way back, Sally and I. I live practically next door. The sirens were such a surprise, and when I’d heard she was taken here....” He shuddered, mouth pulling down into a worried frown. “Look, do you want to come back to my place for a beer? We can talk there. I’m so shaken up.” He tilted his head, all charm and gleaming dark hair, body language pleading for comfort.

My back crawled. “No.” I zipped up my jacket and fired up the engine. 

He frowned, taking a quick step towards me-- apparently confusing his assholeness with invincibility in the face of my bike. “Wait!” He jerked his head around, looking obviously to the sides, behind him. “Wait, please.” He dropped his voice down, leaning forward a bit, fear forcing its way past sensitive in his gaze. “I probably shouldn’t get you involved but... you’re a cop, right? I was really hoping to talk to you. Look, I can’t tell you here, but something’s going on. Meet me tonight? Around twilight? Down at the gully-- you know where that is? I’ll tell you more then, when it’s safer.”

...The fucker. The fucking piece of shit.

“We’ll see,” I said, and revved the engine. He danced back a step and I drove a wide circle around him, leaving him in the parking lot.

* * *

I drove back to my rental and pulled out my cellphone.

My first call was to Butters. It was short; he'd apparently been pushed onto the graveyard shift again, despite the regular shift rotation to encourage a positive and dynamic atmosphere for the modern day police force talked up in the various handbooks and regulation guides we all used to level our desks, and I woke him up.

"How common is a dermal reaction to metal?"

He yawned into the phone. "Depends on which one. Nickel's pretty common, comparatively."

"How about iron? Bad enough that they have to pat down visitors in the hospital and cover the bedrails?"

There was a long pause.

"...Rare. Really, really rare. One-in-a-million rare." And then the long pause's awkward little sister, before he added: "For humans."

"Right. All I needed to know. Get some sleep, Waldo."

"Are you okay? Do you need Carmichael in on this?"

"No. This isn't official. I'm on vacation, remember?"

"Right. ...Be careful, Murph."

"You too, Butters."

It's good advice, these days.

 

I sat back on the deck with a beer and a bucket of ice water to soak my feet and gave myself a few moments to think before my next call. I needed to approach this slowly, and I had to come prepared.

I played devil's advocate with myself for a second, trying to talk myself out of the two conclusions I'd reached. 

Number one: someone had attacked (might still be attacking) the local bartender with magic. It might not have been magic. She'd been burgled, the shock could have knocked her out. Stress causes lots of funny reactions, could have exacerbated something, it could be her heart, it could be her blood... or it could be thaumaturgy. Magic, used to harm. Could be a vampire feed, although she didn't seem to have been downed by too much lust, not the way I thought I'd recognize from the one drained shell Madeline Raith had been careless enough to let end up in lock up-- or just hadn't cared enough to stop. And the other ones are polite enough to leave marks. Which didn't rule out a vampire practitioner. After last year's shitstorm we knew there was at least one in town, could be another out here. Or the same one.

My life.

But hey, it could be a normal, non-magical cause. Couldn't it? It could be her allergy to iron, except that was the big blinking light for conclusion number two-- that Sally wasn't human. She was fae, possibly Sidhe or one of the other sets of fairy folk that I'd heard bits and pieces about, drifting through Chicago's underground politics and practitioners. 

Maybe I was jumping the gun. Maybe she really did have an extremely rare skin allergy.

But dammit, I lived in a city where it was an open secret in the right circles that the local Mafia Don was a figurehead for his sex-vampire wife's reign of terror. Occam's razor actually said that magic-on-magic violence was the simplest explanation here.

So I called my local source-- a little reluctantly, because he's the type who thinks that vaginas are holes that let strength fall out and I didn't entirely trust him not to drive up and try to fix things himself, but I was still a little disappointed when it rang for a minute and then died before it went to his service. His information's the best.

He's not the only game in town, though. I dialed a different number.

"Anna Ash, O-L-E-B-E-S," a woman answered promptly.

"Anna. It's Karrin. I need to know what lives in and around Lake Michigan," I said, by way of greeting.

She sucked in a breath. "Karrin, are you in danger?"

"Not yet." I drummed the table with my fingers. "Somebody's hurt. I don't think whoever did it is human. I need to know how, and I need a list of suspects."

"Give me the details," Anna said, a wall of professionalism suddenly rising in front of her concern. "I’ll see what I can do." 

I rattled off a quick summary, going slow enough for her to take notes. Anna was a reliable friend, about my age, solid and thorough. I’d gotten to know her and her group last year, after some mandated community service. A few years ago she’d been a small time practitioner only, slightly talented, and the de-facto leader of a small group of young women from the larger, loose-knit Chicago practitioner community whose weekly get togethers had a lot more to do with friendship than comparing magical knowledge and defenses. That was before Maddy and before some of us were forced to get up to speed really quick on the supernatural, and all the ways it could mess you up. She'd stopped being a weekend reserve and started networking, and now while she couldn't beat Harry's stash of real-life D&D manuals, she'd know enough contacts to pull together at least a rough picture for me.

I let her think for a minute after I wrapped up. "What are your first impressions?"

She puffed out a breath, loud over the phone connection. “Your friend knew what she was doing, going by those wards you described. So did whatever came through them. Sounds like something a lot stronger than she was.”

“Think it was a vampire?” If only I’d known five years ago that one day I’d be saying something like that with a straight face.

“Likely not,” Anna said. “Depending on the Court, vampires would go after her directly, not after something she had... or in the least, they probably wouldn’t leave her alive after.” I grimaced. Nothing new there, but nice to have confirmation. “And there’s no bite marks or anything on her, right? A White Courter could have left her as a thrall, but given everything else... it wouldn’t be my first thought.” 

“Think Sally’s human?”

Another breath.

“Yeah, me too. Fairy?”

“The iron’s a big clue. The fae are dangerous, Karrin. Remember the rules. You could be getting a lot more than you bargained for helping one. Everything I’ve heard says they don’t like owing mortals favors. Even when they owe you, it never turns out good for the mortal.” 

“Do minor fae ever hide out as mortal practitioners?”

“...I have no idea. I haven’t gone out of my way to deal with them. You’re sure you want to do this?”

“I need to figure out what happened to her. I don’t know what I’ll do from there.” Not a lie, but it felt a bit like one.

“Murphy. We need you back here. Don’t do anything stupid.” 

“They need a cop here, too. Someone who knows what she’s up against.” Not that I thought the local law enforcement was incompetent. But I knew what it was like. Trying to solve a case like this, not even knowing what you might be facing, it was like being cuffed and blindfolded. The best they could do was look psychologically unbalanced. 

Hell, I was already out here on psychiatric leave. I might as well go fight the monsters. Dresden would have agreed with me, if he wasn’t too busy being horrified because someone with breasts was in danger. 

“All right.” She didn’t sound thrilled, but she wasn’t trying to talk me out of it. Like I said: reliable. “There’s a lot it could be, probably fae. Don’t accept anything, gifts are like legal contracts for them-- even saying ‘thank you’ for opening a door could net you a lifetime of trouble. Use iron and never give your name. Be careful. Call if you need anything.”

“Will do. Thanks, Anna.”

I heard her exhale slowly, and the soft click as she hung up. 

I shot a glance up at the sky and then down at my watch. Blue, clear, a few puffy clouds, the sun blazing like a spotlight; just past noon. Leon The Creep didn’t want to meet until twilight-- nice timekeeping there, not at all suspicious. I had time, still. So I killed my beer and shadowboxed myself pink and sweaty-- not hard in this heat-- to clear my head, then showered. I finished off a box of crackers and a pear, staring out over the lake. Great Lake isn’t just a fancy name; I was on a peninsula, narrow enough, and I couldn’t have seen the other side with binoculars. Who knew how many creatures lived out there? I was feeling more than a little out of my jurisdiction.

Did I consider walking away?

Yeah. I did. If Sally wasn't human, she was part of a long history of hidden turf-wars and politics that ate mortals and spat them out. I didn't know the history here. She might be as monstrous as who or whatever had done the deed.

But she was part of the community. She protected the twins-- who knew something about her, at least, and still trusted her. She was dedicated enough to being part of our world that she'd grown a thick enough skin to drive a big iron truck, to break out in hives instead of burning when well-meaning nurses jammed a stainless steel needle under her skin. She was closer to our side than theirs.

And there was no guarantee that the attacks were over. Or that the next victim wouldn't be human.

* * *

The sun disappeared behind the horizon, shadows lengthening and everything turning to shades of blue on blue. I left my bike tucked just off the paved road at the fork where the gully was, taking a careful step out onto the road proper. My motorcycle boots crunched some thistles, a few fallen branches, and the wind picked up, a wet hot gust that had to be almost 90 degrees against the back of my neck.

I waited. 

I’d gotten here early. Tucked in by the trees to hold the fort, try to get eyes on Leon before he wanted me to. There hadn’t been any sign of him yet-- although for all I knew, he’d been waiting just as long or longer for me. 

I waited some more. 

Eventually the stars started to come out, the moon slowly rising over the water, bright and yellow and almost full. So... he was an asshole and he was tardy. The other alternative, of course, was that he was scoping the area out, too. Waiting for me to get impatient, drop my guard. I'd have to take a chance.

I strolled out across the road, keeping my movements casual, scanning the pavement, the dirt path where the roads forked, the ditches and the blacker black that was the mouth of the gully as best I could in the dark. On my walks back to my rental from Sally’s, flashlight guided so I didn’t walk myself into a tree, I’d stop now and then to stare up at the sky; there were more stars out here than I could ever remember seeing before. But tonight, I was really wishing for some good old fashion city light pollution so I could see what the fuck was right in front of me.

“Hey, Leon,” I said, projecting it out. “You wanted to meet me; why don’t you come out?”

Nothing-- silence. Bugs in the ditches. A trickle of water in the gully. Something chirpy that was probably a frog. 

“Last chance, Leon. It’s late.”

Nothing, still. I grit my teeth, pulled my flashlight out from my jacket pocket. I could always make myself more of a target, but I really didn’t like the idea of standing out here exposed with a bright beam of light to point the way. Then, from down the in darkness of the gully, there was the sound of some rocks rolling, and a big, long, wet snort. 

I flicked my flashlight on and aimed it at the noise, the beam reflecting off the little stream and the wet rocks in the gully, but not doing much to break up the darkness after the ground started to slope down toward the beach. I resisted the urge to drop down and draw my backup weapon from my ankle holster. “Hey” I called instead, putting as much ‘cop’ into my voice as I could. It was a lot. “What do you think you’re doing? Come on out of there.”

That snort again, more of a breathy snuffling sound, really, then what was unmistakably a whicker, the clatter of rolling rocks, and a horse appeared at the mouth of the gully. 

It was a beautiful horse. The blackest black, both its coat and its mane, setting off its pale eyes, a strong neck and gracefully long face, delicate ankles that picked carefully over the rocks of the gully until it was standing full in front of me, a few feet away, neck arched proudly. 

The moon brightened like someone sliding a dimmer switch up the other way, and I could see it even more clearly, the light gleaming off the smooth, satiny looking coat, reflecting off the pale, liquid eyes. The wind gusted again, blowing its mane out in a wide fan. My breath caught, and something approximately nine years old with pigtails started skipping about my chest singing about horsies horsies horsies. It was a _beautiful_ horse.

I turned my flashlight off and stuck it back in the pocket inside my jacket. “Hey there. Where did you come from, buddy?” I asked, stretching a hand out towards the horse, trying to look as harmless and inviting as I could. It ducked its head, big hooves dancing nervously, whuffling at my voice. "Hey," I said softly, as the big animal moved shyly closer. "Hey, it's okay. You from a farm somewhere around here?"

It whickered and lowered its nose, huffing a sweet breath against my outstretched hand. I cupped my palm invitingly, scratching lightly at the short fur under its chin, and it leaned against me. "It's okay. Man, I kind of wish I had something to give you. What do horses like?" 

Just silence and big black eyes. It tossed its head invitingly, and I remembered the snack I hadn’t eaten before I rode over. "Oats? Do you like oats?" I jammed a hand into my jeans pocket, coming out with a slightly squashed honey-nut granola bar. I unwrapped it and there was a happy snorting sound of recognition, or at least it liked the smell. I offered it out, and it took the bar gently from my hands, its nose softer than anything, whiskers scratching at my palm as it plucked it up with its soft lips and crunched vigorously.

Then it knelt down.

"...Seriously?" I laughed. "You want to give me a ride?"

It tossed its head again, whickering like it was laughing along with me.

"Well... Leon's a no-show. And you're pretty sweet. I don't see why not."

I climbed carefully astride it, holding tight with my knees, and it stood up easily-- surprisingly high, from up there. Its coat and mane were slippery and wet, almost silky. With a little sigh it started to trot. Walk. Whatever they call it when a horse walks slowly, making its way confidentially down the gully. 

I went to reach inside my jacket-- and froze.

I hadn't felt it, but tendrils of the horse's mane had tangled around my legs, my ankles, my boots. As I watched, they tightened, a few lengthening strands coiling around my thighs. I tried to move a little, to work out some slack, but I might as well have been superglued to the horse’s skin, the restraints were so tight.

"Hey, I remember something else horses like." It was starting to run, across the beach, towards the water, a jerking, jarring motion, hooves pounding on the sand. I stopped trying to play it cool and dragged the crowbar from Mister Foss’s shed out of my jacket, hard enough to rip the inner lining. "Horses like _iron_ , right?"

It leapt for the water, and I threw myself across its neck, plastering myself as flat as I could with my legs restrained, and pulled the crowbar tight across its windpipe.

There was a scream that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight, and it came down hard into the shallow water, kicking and dancing-- when it threw its head back I saw the whites of its eyes. And its very, very sharp teeth. It reared back and I felt the grip on my legs loosening up just in time for it to lunge forward and try to throw me, its mane untangling from my legs like it had never been, and I pulled harder on the crowbar, gripping its shoulders tight with my knees, feeling myself sliding on its silky coat.

It screamed again, higher and more ragged, and started to throw itself in a circle, sending bruising shocks through my body even though I was trying to stay limp. I started slipping sideways, my left leg losing purchase, and I fell across its right shoulder, dangling from its neck, death-grip on the iron bar.

The long neck craned back and it snapped at me, white serrated teeth catching at my leather jacket, leaving a streak of reddish foam and torn leather. My arms were starting to feel like bruised pasta-- but it was starting to stagger, movements tight and jerky.

It charged out deeper into the lake, and I kicked desperately at its knobby right knee. It threw itself forward, crashing into knee-deep water, throwing me hard against it-- I cracked my skull against the back of its head, saw stars.

The world lurched and telescoped, twisting oddly-- no, that was the horse, shrinking under me, muscles squirming as it changed shape, mass shedding off it in strands of seaweed that dissolved into nothing. The long mane lightened and receded, some joints changed directions, the head shortened up and the long torso between my legs lost the silky hair and faded into tan skin--

"Forfeit!" Leon gasped, clawing at the bar around his neck. His fingertips came back red and already blistering. "Forfeit, forfeit, stupid mortal bitch I give you my forfeit!"

I flexed the fingers of my right hand, stiffly and painfully letting go of the crowbar, and sagged back in the water, jacket sodden, boots squishing.

"That's right, Leon." I stood up, wincing. The water had been knee deep on the horse; it was up past my waist and cold, although at least that was probably keeping the swelling down. He'd landed on my ankle while he was still horsey and I could feel how unsteady it was. I adjusted my grip on the crowbar with my left hand, keeping it close. "Now. You said you had some things to tell me."

* * *

On land, and under the beam of my flickering, water-damaged flashlight, Leon wasn't looking himself.

Herself. Themself. All of the above. Obviously ‘asshole in his prime’ wasn't the default setting-- the genitalia that the fae was making no attempt to conceal were ambiguous, a mesh of male and female. Hips slightly broader, shoulders narrower so that it was less decisive whether the swell of the chest was breast tissue or muscle. Leon was still beautiful-- which I sort of assumed was the point-- but, in ways that had nothing to do with androgyny, a lot less human.

Some of the ways did involve the teeth, though, just as sharky as they had been as a horse. And the eyes, bulging, silver, and huge-pupiled like a fish.

"You took a gift from me," I said, shivering a little. "Then I defeated you in combat. I don't want to make a big deal about that, though. Do you, Leon?"

Leon spat at me, but otherwise stayed sitting where I'd told them to.

"All you have to do is cooperate and this all goes away." It wasn't easy, carrying the weight of being both the good cop and the bad cop, but I'm a multi-tasker. I smiled, despite my rage and what I could acknowledge to myself was fear. "This doesn't have to get personal."

"Interloper," Leon glared back. "You have no idea what you're getting into, mortal. No fucking idea."

"Just doing a favor for a friend, buddy."

They laughed. "Favor. I would almost help you just to see how the skinchanger pays you back for that favor."

"That's my problem; let me worry about it," I said, pretending I wasn't just as worried, because I was way out of Kansas by this point and heading deeper into Oz. "Tell me who broke into her house."

A sneer, their upper lip exceptionally prehensile. "You did, little mortal. I saw you, sneaking in where you have no business, under the dark of night. After those ginger pinchers cried their sob story at you, boo-fucking-hoo.”

My back crawled; I tightened my grip on the crowbar and tried not to think of Leon watching me in the dark. “Funny. Who broke in before I did?”

“The mortal police,” Leon said, flicking their hair, lighter than the coal black of the horse and more human looking, but still noticeably falling from a single line running from their forehead down the back of their skull. “With their sirens and lights and iron weapons, stomping about where they don’t belong.” 

“Last chance, sunshine. Who broke into Sally’s house?”

They bared their teeth at me, sharp fangs in the dim light. “You are treading on dangerous ground, mortal woman." But we both knew they had to answer me. "The handmaiden of the Winter Lady.”

Well, at least we were starting to get somewhere. “And what the fuck is a winter lady?”

Leon paused for a moment, then smiled up at me, as vicious and sharp as their snarl a minute before. “Six queens there are and two kings, in the Courts of the Sidhe. The Sidhe are divided in their rank and loyalty to the Seelie and the Unseelie, known also as the Court of Summer and the Court of Winter, who hold court over the turning of the years. Eldest and most powerful of Winter is the Winter Mother, the Queen who Was. Reigning and triumphant is the Winter Queen, called Mab, ruler of Air and Darkness, the Queen who Is. And young and fair is Maeve, the Winter Lady, the Queen who Is to Be.

“Green are her handmaiden’s teeth, who sleeps in the still pools. Wide is her reach. Screwed beyond belief are you, mortal snoop.”

I didn’t rise to their bait. “Why Sally? Is she on the Summer team?” 

“She is of no Court. Wyldfae. It is a dangerous thing to be, in these days.” Leon was just talking now, and the curl of their lips told me that they had a reason for doing so and it wasn’t because they liked me.

They continued: “The Handmaiden claimed this coast, for lines are being drawn. Some of us were wise and bent the knee to her, for she has influence among the Courts. And some, gone fat and stupid and native, claimed their independence yet.”

“You mean Sally? Answer.” 

“I mean Sally. Skinchanger, and fool. Who thought herself so wise and safe.” 

Like a mob family moving in. Anyone who didn’t play ball became an example. 

“Were you in on the hit?” I asked, more sharply than I meant to, and cursed myself. Leon was starting to hit buttons, and just because I had them by the legal short ones didn’t mean they weren’t trying to screw me over as hard possible. 

“No.” We seemed to be back to the short answers.

“Did the handmaiden put you up to ambushing me tonight?”

“To dispose of you,” they sneered, “in any way I chose.” 

“So. That was what that bullshit this afternoon was about? Screw, kill, no marry option?” 

“Oh, mortal. I would still have killed you,” they said, sounding amused. “But you would have died happy.” 

My teeth ground together. Head in the game, Murphy. I was proud of how bland my voice sounded when I asked, “What did the handmaiden take?” 

“What would you take, of a skinchanger?” 

“Straight answer, pal.” 

They sighed, a big breathy sound of disgust. “Her skin.” 

“Why won’t she wake up?” 

“You understand little of thaumaturgy.” 

“Why won’t she wake up, Leon?” I was starting to sound angry again. 

“The handmaiden sends nightmares through her skin. Enspells her in eternal sleep.” 

“If she gets the skin back, she wakes up?” 

“Yes,” Leon said. 

“Great. Do you know where the handmaiden is now?” 

“I do.” 

“Then how about we go on a walk.”

* * *

Leon led me up the rocks of the sloppy little bank, about a quarter mile up the coast from the gully, into an old outflow pipe. It was a narrow fit, we both had to stoop, Leon bending almost double. My flashlight flickered as we went in; a few hard smacks against my hip got the beam nearly steady again. The pipe hadn’t been used in a while, best I could tell, at least not for its original job. There was a solid layer of slippery moss on the ground and brushing my arms, and there were little breaks in the concrete, flashes of roots in my flashlight beam. The smell of the place was unpleasant in all the expected ways, but stagnant. Old. 

Leon walked three paces ahead of me, like I had told them to. We had some ground rules. They were to stay silent. They were to stay within my eyeshot. They were to stick to paths that a mortal could survive. 

I’m not a lawyer; it wasn’t a great agreement. I could think of half a dozen ways they could still get me killed by staying within the lines-- but that part was up to me. I kept my crowbar tucked against my non-flashlight holding arm and walked slowly along in the ankle-deep water, just fast enough to make my one ankle throb where Leon-the-horse had landed on it. 

The concrete tube around us was starting to give way to a downward slope, becoming rougher, the walls further away, the ceiling higher. That wasn’t right; I’d have expected things to tighten, to eventually hit a dead end and a bunch of connecting pipes. Eventually we turned-- north. Right. I sunk that into my memory. West, left. South, left again. Straight for a while. Leon’s footsteps sounded oddly hollow, clopping and clipping against the ground. All stone, now, no longer concrete. My back tried to crawl at that-- I had no _idea_ what I was doing-- but I forced it down, gripping my flashlight tighter, panning it ahead of us. It glinted off water running down the sides of... wherever we were. Definitely not an outflow pipe anymore.

West, right, immediately north, right, then west, left. Straight. I didn’t hear Leon step into the deeper water, but my boots filled, icy cold, up to mid shin, and I gasped. So much for my backup weapon. Hopefully I wouldn’t need it tonight. Leon chuckled, a snorty breath that wasn’t quite sound, under our agreement, and I gritted my teeth and wondered if he was going to lead me into a pool that only a mortal Olympic swimmer could survive. The water got to my knees, and then we were up on a ridge, narrow and bumpy enough that I just about rolled my ankle a few times, feeling along in the dark, and the water sloshed around my boots again.

We hit dry land after what felt like maybe fifty feet, but my spatial awareness was shot. A sharp turn north, right, through a little entrance way I hadn’t seen, and then a long slope downward. I started to feel air-- damp and cool and smelling slightly sour, but moving against my face. The space around us was getting bigger and bigger. We passed three turnoffs, the wind whistling down one, jagged rocks piled in front of another, the other silent save for the water dripping off the top of the passage. 

There was water everywhere where we were too, when I panned my light around, running down the walls, pooling on the ground, and I struggled to keep up without letting Leon know I was struggling. My socks and boots squished, my jeans heavy, and I was overheated under the layers and weight. It felt like we’d been walking for over mile, maybe almost two; we had to be practically underneath the little Goose Hollow village center by now. 

Wherever we were, it was huge. A big open cavern, stretching far to my right, the roof so high I couldn’t tell how far up it actually went, only darkness that stretched on and on, sounds echoing: Leon’s clopping footsteps, the little stones I kicked whenever I took a step, my breathing. There was no way this could all be under the town. Where the hell were we? Fuck, fairy land? 

Slight left, west some more, and my legs got wet again, sudden and cold, right up to mid thigh. More water. I could see what I was pretty sure was solid rock in front of us, the dark glimmer of water sloshing against it with our movements. It had to be a tunnel. A passage way. A cave. Something. 

And then more water, up past my waist and I started to worry-- and then I barely had a chance to suck in a lungful of air, and it was over my head, pitch black, my flashlight flickering down, a dim, waning orange glow. I could just see bubbles up ahead, Leon’s feet kicking, and strained to push myself through the water after them, one hand wrapped tight around the flashlight, the crowbar in my jacket and my clothes dragging me down, my boots taking the strength out of my kicks, my ankle throbbing.

We swam. And swam. 

And swam.

I didn’t dare kick my boots off, or leave my weapons or jacket behind, or risk surfacing, but I was beginning to think I was going to have to do something-- my chest was burning, my vision was going spotty, I was taking way too long to form thoughts. How long had I been underwater? 

Leon was getting farther and farther ahead of me. Were they going to leave me here to drown? They’d tried before, and now I wasn’t even close enough for my iron to be a threat. They disappeared. Of course. I’d told them to walk three feet in front of me; I hadn’t said anything about swim... 

My hands, outstretched, smacked into rock. My fingers went numb, and I flailed to catch the flashlight when I dropped it, then scrabbled up the rock with my other hand, fingers scraping, and I felt open air. I kicked up to the surface, clung to the rock ledge and gasped, coughed at how _cold_ it was, gasped again, breath billowing out in front of me, and panted, sucking in breath after breath. 

I hoisted myself up the ledge with a grunt, a slushy layer of ice there, rearing up to my feet more than rising. My head was spinning; Leon sneered at me from a few feet away, their big silver eyes gleaming in the darkness. 

I coughed, spat out the stale, dirty tasting water that was running down my face and finding my mouth. “How far are we?”

They stayed silent, gave a laconic shrug. 

For fuck’s sake. “You can answer the question.”

“Not long, little mortal. If you think you will make it.”

“Let’s go.” 

It wasn’t far after that. Ten feet through another passageway, freezing, one that ended in an actual door, the knob glinting in the dark. For some reason, that freaked me out a lot more than anything else down here had, a healthy jerk of fear and adrenaline to make my hands shake. 

My flashlight barely made a dent in the darkness-- I was just glad it was still working at all after that last dip-- and I followed Leon more by the sound of their footsteps than any real visibility, the door swinging by my face when he opened it. Then a different light, one I wasn’t making, eery and sickly green, like a cross between a glowstick and the flat cool glow of LED lights, and we stepped out into a wide, open cavern, cold enough that some of the water in my hair iced over, half of the place solid ground, half dark water, little pools here and there, throwing back the light and making it hard to tell where it was coming from in the first place.

“We’re here,” Leon said, turning and baring their teeth. “Our deal has reached its end, mortal. I’ll enjoy eating your bones.” Their hand flashed out and my flashlight clattered down, glass shattering.

I lifted the crowbar and froze in an offensive crouch-- partly professional training, partly muscle exhaustion from that long, airless swim. It was just as well, because a second later a woman’s voice came out of the darkness. 

“What have you brought me, waterhorse?” 

“The mortal woman. The one to whom changelings cried for help.” 

“You are scarred with iron, waterhorse.” 

“She is not ignorant of the world. She met me prepared.”

“I charged you to dispose of her. Why have you brought her to me?”

“She bade me. She seeks the skinchanger’s skin.”

“She trapped you in contract?”

“She bested me in combat, and bid me lead her to you.” I wasn’t imagining the sulk that crept into their voice at that.

“Yeah, and she’s right here,” I snapped, now that I was sure I had my breath back and my teeth weren’t going to chatter. “You’re the Winter Lady’s handmaiden, I presume?”

The light started to brighten. I could see the woman now, standing beside an altar a few feet away. There was a silver bowl in the middle of it, full of something greenish and unhealthy looking, the sleeve of a jacket lying limply across the rim. Gassy tendrils of light flickered over it, like little storm clouds and probably just as pleasant. The woman was pale, with long horror-movie hair spilling around a supermodel body. Golden eyes. Flat, unamused expression. 

“What claim do you make on this skin?”

“She gave me hospitality. I owe her a debt.” 

“She gives many hospitality. She trades her services for mortal currency.” A twist of her lips let me know what the handmaiden thought of that-- and showed me that Leon had been being literal when he described her teeth as green. It was like looking at a mouthful of new spring leaves. 

“She gave me hospitality that I haven’t paid back.” A friendly drink, after hours. Which seemed significantly less friendly right now. I wondered what a kiss went for on the fairy market.

“What you are proposing is overpayment, mortal woman. But I am afraid you will die still in debt.” She stared at me for a moment, eyes narrowed; her pupils were vertical diamonds, like a cat’s, and they caught her eerie green light. “You are done with my waterhorse?”

I looked over at Leon, who was waiting at the door and staring at me with a hungry look. 

“Leon completed our deal,” I said, like I did this every day. “As long as they aren’t trying to kill me I don’t care what they do.” 

The woman looked past me. Her face said, very clearly: ‘you have fucked up. You’re not first on my shitlist, but you are close to the top.’ “Go,” she said, in tones that said roughly the same thing. 

Leon skulked back into the darkness, and I heard hooves clattering away.

“And you,” she said, turning back to me. And I was at the top of her shitlist. I tightened my grip on my crowbar, the metal cold enough it was starting to make my hands ache. But I sure as hell wasn’t letting go. “You have entered my demesne without invitation, brought cold iron against me, made clear your intent to steal from me.”

“You ordered your lapdog to kill me.”

“You interfered.” She took a step forward, down off her altar, naked as the day she was born. If Sidhe handmaidens were born. Leon hadn’t mentioned it. And then she moved faster than I could see, and slapped me across the cavern. 

I skidded to a stop about six feet away, about a half a foot from a pool of dark water, smooth as glass, and started wheezing as soon as I hit the ground, chest burning, back seizing. It was going to be a _wall_ of bruises in a few hours. I got my knees up just in time-- caught the handmaiden in the stomach when she launched herself at me and kicked out, sending her staggering backwards a few steps, and rolled away from the water’s edge before she could recover enough to shove me in it. I was new at this fairy thing, but I wasn’t stupid, and I sure as hell didn’t want to find out what was at the bottom of that puddle. 

She surged forward again, but I had my crowbar out, and I brought it down on her wrist. She shrieked and yanked her hand back, swatted at me with the other with fingertips that shredded my jacket like knives. My poor damn jacket, on the other side from Leon’s bite, of course; but better my jacket than my skin. I tucked my elbows in and jerked up towards her, powering through with my obliques to get enough leverage to swing the crowbar up into the soft underside of her chin. 

She gagged and fell backwards, landing on her hands and feet, scuttling sideways like a crab while she coughed and gasped, an ugly dark burn blistering up where I’d hit her. It gave me enough time to get to my knees before she was back, catching me with a backhanded smack across the ear that made my vision white out with a whine. 

I was on the ground before I even realized I’d been hit, half my face gone numb, spots dancing around in front of my eyes. Shards of ice grew up around me like the bars of a cage. I shattered them with my crowbar, and it gave the handmaiden enough time to pounce on me, pinning my wrists to the ground. I could feel the water on me freeze, and then something deeper freezing, my wrists burning, my hands spasming, the crowbar clattering to the ground. I guess I knew where Sally had gotten that frostbite.

I slammed my knees together, cracking them hard against her ribcage, and when she flinched back from that got a knee between us and brought it up hard between her legs then rolled us over, pinning her for long enough to bring one of my elbows, helped along by her freezing grip on my wrist, down on the the bridge of her nose. 

There was a gush of dark blood and she gasped, letting go of my wrists to shove me back, and I scrambled until I found the crowbar-- my hands fought me, trembling for a moment when I clenched them into fists-- and I hit the ground when the handmaiden screamed, a wave of something cold enough to shatter stone streaming past my head.

I have a few blackbelts in my closet, but one thing I always tell rookies is that no amount of martial arts training will make you invincible. I hadn’t trained in crowbar, my holds and blocks based on a mixture of katana and staff training-- whatever had felt right in the moment. And by ‘right’, I meant ‘what my body did without conscious thought to keep me from dying’, which was what a big chunk of my training was for. 

The crowbar was good. It didn’t have a blade like a katana, but the effect it had on the fae was extreme enough. Now I had just better _keep_ the crowbar because without it, I would be hand to hand with a woman who could throw me like a ragdoll, and all those instinctive reactions, the drilled forms, would just get me killed. 

I curled in, squatting low and ducking my chin, and launched myself in the direction I thought the altar was, losing a bit of leverage with a grunt when my ankle gave out, veering lopsided. I didn’t make it far, but when I hit the handmaiden on the way I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her down with me.

She started clawing at me before we’d even hit the ground-- my poor jacket took another hit, all the way through, and she cut into my left biceps. I brought that elbow up into her neck, swung the crowbar around in a follow through, and made it about three staggering steps, dodging another one of those pools, before her wrist wrapped around my ankle like a vise. 

My bad ankle. I heard something pop, and I screamed. And whipped my arm back, bring the crowbar in a wide arc, a graceless strike with my entire instinct for self preservation behind it. The grip on my ankle eased and I scrambled forward to the altar, grabbing for the bowl. It spilled-- toppled off. There was a smell of rotting meat and stagnant water, like a floater pulled from the river a week after the fact. I gagged, rolling away from the splash, the clanging bowl. 

There was an angry snarl behind me, and I crawled as fast as I could to grab the jacket out of the stinking puddle. 

I rolled on my back, crowbar up. The handmaiden was staring at me, face furious, mouth gaping and full of green points. 

“You have no claim to that, mortal,” she hissed, shadows rising up around her like the fur on the back of an angry cat. “You steal from me, you forfeit yourself to my will.”

I jammed my hand into the jacket pockets, first one then the other, rooting desperately, please please let it still be there-- my fingers brushed it, one foxed corner, and I clawed it out, still dry, somehow, and thrust my business card out towards her. “You want to talk forfeit, asshole? What about what you stole from me, huh? I gave Sally my name, you fucker, not you. You owe me this and more. I want your word-- you don’t harm me or stop me from getting the fuck out of here,” I shook the jacket at her, scrambling awkwardly to my feet and shoving my business card back into the pocket, “with this and anything I brought with me.”

She took an angry step towards me, and I thrust out my crowbar. “I fucking mean it. It’s the best deal you’re going to get, pal.”

“Then let the Lake eat you,” she snarled, taking a few steps back to one of the pools of dark, still water, disappearing beneath the surface without a ripple. All the lights went out.

* * *

Clutching Sally’s jacket, I waited in the dark for my eyes to adjust. They didn’t. There was nothing to adjust to. The weird luminescence had disappeared with the handmaiden; so had the freezing cold, warmth seeping back into my extremities. I could hear water dripping. Strange clattering in the distance. 

I turned carefully, shooting for exactly 180 degrees, and started walking slowly, feeling along with my toes for those damn pools. Eventually I hit something solid, not stone but wood. It felt like the door I had come out of, knob and all, half open, as I rammed a shoulder into it and stifled a gasp. There was a pool to one side, a sudden drop from the path. Not the one the handmaiden had disappeared down. Hopefully. 

There was that clattering sound again, coming from the other side of the door, faint, carried on the dank little breeze that blew the smell of stale old water at me.

I sat down in the doorway, sucked in a breath, and tried to calm myself down. It’s not easy to calm down in a hurry. The deadline sort of interferes with the whole process. I made myself think of the journey I’d taken with Leon, made myself replay _right, left, left, straight, right, right, left, straight, wade, right, downward slope, past the three turnoffs, slight left, swim_ in my head. No second-guessing, no giving myself a chance to talk myself out of what I remembered. It was going to be hard enough running the directions backward without freaking out at every intersection.

The clattering sound was getting louder, and I stood up sharply and started to move.

It was hellish. I kept a hand on the wall when I could, limping forward with my clothes soaking and my boots starting to blister my heels. They’re good boots, old and well worn in, but they were never designed to go swimming in. My socks were wet, scraping around my ankles. 

I was losing track of time in the darkness-- starting to feel like I’d been walking for hours, that I was really lost, panic snatching at the edges of my concentration. My jacket was a soaking, useless weight, but the soft suede crushed in my fist reminded me just how much I had to lose if I left anything behind here. My footsteps were loud, but when I held still I couldn’t hear the clattering sound anymore. 

I was just letting myself get cautiously optimistic when I stepped onto ground that wasn’t there, falling forward into still water, curling myself around the crowbar and Sally’s jacket as I splashed in. 

It was only waist deep, when I had unclenched and put my feet down, a gentle slope leading deeper. The underwater passage I’d gone under with Leon. 

Probably. 

It was impossible to ignore my brain screaming, now-- that if I was wrong, and I tried to go under and make it to the other side, I could get trapped, drown, run into… something coming up from the deep water, that Leon could be waiting here to ambush me. 

Like when I was a kid, making that first cold plunge of spring, I ducked my head underwater and kicked forward. My ankle popped and hollered at me, the cold water not nearly close enough to an ice pack to make up for the pressure and movement. 

I came up a little too early and scraped the shit out of one hand and the sleeve of my jacket when I hit a rough rock surface instead of air, but a few feet beyond that the rock gave way and I popped out into the open again, sloshing my way up the incline. The air was still stagnant, but warm and heavy, and at least hinted at a fresher breeze somewhere, far away, and nothing tasted better when I gasped and coughed my way into breathing again. 

There was light. And as the water cleared out of my ears, the soft shuffle and clatter of many bodies. Many big, big bodies, smooth, rounded shadows at the edge of a light too bright to look at. Shapes. Long spindly legs. Big, wide, serrated edges of pinchers, hoisted and ready. Like crabs from hell, out to avenge every buffet and Red Lobster dinner. 

I tensed my legs, took the weight off my ankle best I could, still shin deep in the pool, and tightened my cold, aching hand around the crowbar and hugged Sally’s jacket to my chest. They didn’t move on me, and slowly my eyes adjusted. 

The twins were standing in the middle of the circle of light, each carrying a lantern filled with drifting motes that pulsed and glowed, the collective light far brighter than the little balls seemed capable of, whatever they were. Jenna was pale and shivering a little. Nate looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there. 

Jenna raised her lantern, and the big crab-things skittered back from the light it made. 

“Miss Murphy?” she said, her voice quavering. “We should probably go.” 

I nodded and climbed wearily out of the water, sloshing over to them, not sure if I could trust them, but sure that they were a better alternative then the massive claws waiting in the shadows. 

Jenna took point, Nate behind me, and together we walked slowly out of the big cavern. 

Once we were out of view of the cavern entrance, Jenna started to walk faster, and kept shooting glances over her shoulder. I sped up, as much as I could, trying not to limp and make it obvious that if they did turn on me, I was already wounded game, and we were stumbling out of the concrete pipe and down onto the beach before I realized where we were. They obviously knew a shortcut Leon didn’t-- or hadn’t wanted to take me down.

Jenna got away from the pipe and flopped down on the sand, panting, still holding her lantern out. 

“Oh man,” Nate said, crashing to his knees beside her and putting his lantern down. “Oh man. When Sally woke up we knew you must have done something and we saw Leon’s prints on the beach and knew you had to be under the lake--” 

Under. The lake. I jerked my gaze over to the water, as wide as ever, the reflection of the moon scattered across the surface. But we hadn’t even turned east once... “How did you keep those things back?” I demanded, and it came out shaky. 

“I don’t even know how that worked,” Nate said, looking at me wide eyed. “I can’t believe they remember.” 

“Of course they remember Mom,” Jenna said, indignantly. “This is her part of the lake, hers and Sally’s. Jenny doesn’t have any right to come in here. And Leon can do her dirty work all he wants but the shellycobbs remember.”

Jenny? The handmaiden? “Your mother--” 

They looked awkwardly at each other. 

“Mom’s been gone for a while but she’s coming back.” 

Changelings, Leon had called them. I knew about those. One human parent, one fairy parent. One of the OLEBES had a little girl in tow most times I’d met her. The girl’s father had apparently been a one night stand a few Summer solstice celebrations back, and everyone was holding their breath a little for when puberty finally struck. Usually the fairy parent wasn’t exactly paying child support. But maybe not always?

“What’s your mom?” I grimaced. Apparently I’d run out of tact in the cave.

“Mom’s a greater shellycobb.” Nate lifted his chin, challenging me to insult his mother. 

“...Like the things in the cave.” 

“Bigger,” Jenna said. “Older. And _she_ doesn’t work for handmaidens. Only the _queens_ can call her.” She sounded pretty proud about that.

“Huh.” I pursed my lips. I didn’t say: you look pretty normal for being half hellcrab. 

We sat quietly for a little while, and finally Jenna stopped shaking. She took the two lanterns, hers and Nate’s, and knelt by the edge of the water. The water lapped at the knees of her mud-stained jeans as she unscrewed the tops of them-- not iron, I noticed, but brass-- and poured the glowing motes into the lake. 

I peered after them, just catching the pulsing forms of little jellyfish shapes as their light slowly dimmed. 

“Do... you want to know about Sally?” Nate asked uneasily. 

“Nah. I’ll work that out with her.” 

“The hospital called. To say she woke up,” he said-- which he’d already half mentioned but he was obviously not at full speed and I wasn’t going to blame him for that. “We’re staying in the bar because Leon can’t get in there. Sally told him not to come back, and that counts for something. He’s not strong like Jenny. He can’t break wards. You should probably stay there tonight.” 

I frowned, repeated back so I understood. “You’re staying at the bar?”

“Leon can’t get in,” Nate repeated. “Come on, we should go.” He didn’t say ‘we’re sitting ducks out here,’ but that’s what it sounded like. 

The twins had freed their lights and Leon had broken mine, but the moon gave us just enough not-black to stumble along the water's edge by until we hit the gully, and then we crawled painfully-- me-- and gracelessly-- us-- up the rocks to the dirt road. I got my bike from the trees, skin crawling and muscles twitching from exhaustion and high alert at all the shadows, the sounds, the fact that I wouldn’t even see Leon coming, and inched it along the road, sacrificing stealth for the headlight and being able to see where we were going and if anything was coming.

I made them stop at my rental, hauled my bike practically up on the deck. The door was still locked-- not as reassuring as it could have been. I crept in slowly, crowbar at the ready, and grabbed the first contained food I came across (two apples and a box of crackers), my gun cleaning kit, and a change of clothes. I’d change at the bar.

We made it there without incident, except for the grand anticlimax of muscle cramps when I let my back drop after Nate locked the bar door behind us. Jenna flipped on the lights, then a few of the fans, and I dropped my stuff on a booth. Not a table, because the tables were all pushed to the far end of the main room, chairs stacked neatly around them, to make room for the two air mattresses and the two little backpacks that didn’t look nearly full enough. 

Jenna tucked the lanterns into one of the backpacks, then ducked behind the bar, passing over a half-empty bag of Doritos to Nate, and then a bottle of water. “We ate all the salad mix,” she said. “But there are still some chips left, and we can get more in the morning.” She paused. “We can probably make you something from the stuff in the back. If you don’t mind paying for it.”

I pulled my box of crackers out of my pile. “I’m covered.” 

Nate nodded, shoving one hand into the Dorito bag and then into his mouth, and I kept my face impassive and didn’t say anything about they way they were living, about how any asshole that terrified a pair of teenagers so badly they were camping out on a barroom floor deserved a whole lot worse than to be on the outs with his boss. 

“I’m going to go the bathroom to change,” I said instead, and when I came back out, as sore as ever but at least in dry clothes, Jenna had one of the backpacks emptied at her feet-- some balled up piles of cloth that must have been underwear and shirts, half a bottle of Coke, some gum, a battered paperback, her toothbrush and toothpaste-- and held out a bottle of aspirin and a box of bandaids to me.

“Here,” she said. “Sorry we don’t have anything else.”

I hesitated a second.

“It’s okay,” she added. “We don’t work in deals like that-- not until we choose.”

“If we choose Mom’s side,” Nate said, and Jenna nodded.

“If it makes you feel better, it can be for helping us.”

I pulled a face-- I couldn’t think like this, everything in terms of favors, trades and debt, not and stay on this side of cynical jerk. But I did tell Sally I was looking after the twins, and whatever else they were, half hellcrab or not, they were two scared kids who thought half a bag of Doritos made for a complete meal.

I took the aspirin and the bandaids and retreated back to the bathroom, cleaning out my scrapes and cuts the best I could with a tap and paper towels. My back was already turning purple, and my ankle was so sore I didn’t really want to risk taking my boot off. Not the healthiest decision, but it would keep it compressed until I could deal with it. 

Then I went back out, and the twins were curled up together on one of the air mattresses, each of them wrapped in a hoodie despite the heat.

“Twins,” I said. “Jenna, Nate. I’m okay, take your own beds.”

Jenna blinked at me for a minute, then rolled across the floor onto the empty mattress. I pulled out a chair and faced the door, crowbar within easy reach, and took apart my backup weapon-- still dripping lake water and under-lake water-- to clean it. We stayed that way until morning.

* * *

In the morning, I surrendered my jacket and keys at the hospital admission desk again, and headed up to Sally’s room. 

Sally smiled when she saw me, raising off her hospital pillows a little, but her expression sobered when she saw the look on my face and the general scrapes. I’d bandaided up what I could, but half a glance in the bathroom mirror before I rode over told me I still looked like I’d gone midnight rock climbing. My long-sleeved shirt was hiding most of the bruises, at least.

“Jesus, Karrin. Are you okay?” 

“Long night,” I said crisply, and reached in my bag to pull out her jacket. Her eyes widened, and she drew in a breath when I tucked it into the narrow hospital bed next to her. Unlike my own boots and jacket, it had shaken off the water easily; it was dry as a bone and somehow butter soft despite the abuse it had taken. She ran a hand unsteadily over it. “That’s yours,” I said-- unnecessarily, I felt. 

She lifted her eyes to meet mine. “That’s not something my people hear often. Karrin--” 

“No.” I lifted a hand. “Not now. Later. I haven’t slept in two days. You’ve got your skin back. The twins are safe. I’m not going to do this until I’ve had eight hours of sleep and something to eat.” 

“Okay,” she said quietly. “Tonight? At Foss’s place?” 

“Sure.” I turned and left without a word, managing to drive my bike back to my rental without killing myself or anyone else or wrecking it. The blazing sunlight outside was enough reassurance, false or not, that I fell asleep almost instantly with the fan squeaking over me and the light streaming in through the curtains. 

I woke up long enough to order a pizza from a pizza joint in town, agreed to pay the fortune they were asking for delivery, slept again, woke up long enough to pay for it an hour and a half later, and then woke up again when the light was coming in through different windows and the pizza had gone cold. 

I ate half of it anyway, checked my voicemail and phoned Sheriff Payton back to thank her for letting me know Sally had woken up, and then dragged a towel out with me to lie on the beach in the last sun. 

I woke up again at a splash out in the lake, a loud chuffing sound and a plume of mist that had me sitting bolt upright. A dark form streaked through the water, making a wide playful circle, and then charged the shallows, hurling itself out of the water and humping up the beach with a chortling sound. 

Silly whiskery dog face, chocolatey wet skin. Big dark eyes, tiny nub ears. Not a seal. Seals had spots, right? Or was it the other way? 

The animal rolled over, and sealskin shrunk and revealed a lot of not-sealskin, and then Sally was getting to her feet and shaking out her hair and brushing sand off her thighs. She was wearing her jacket. She wasn’t wearing anything else, and I admit my sleepy thoughts stuttered as she took a few rolling steps and her hips swung back and forth. The hair that trailed up from her crotch to a sparse line on her stomach was still silky-brown and sleek looking, moving interestingly with the flesh of her hips and stomach. I jerked my eyes up to hers.

“Hey,” she said. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah. A little more human. Sorry if that’s rude.” 

“It isn’t.” She stretched, her jacket clinging intriguingly to her chest. I surreptitiously ran my tongue over my teeth and tried to pull my brain back together. “I’m feeling more like myself, too.” 

“Good. I guess that makes us square for the vodka.” I couldn’t help but sound sour, reminding myself about that. The technicality had kept me from getting my ass kicked _legally_ in that cave under the lake, but trying to think of life in terms of tiny favors and balance sheets left me pissed off. I’d considered Sally a friend, but after last night’s adventure I wasn’t sure where she stood.

“Maybe technically.” Sally frowned. “But there are debts and there are debts. And some of us think little things like life debts can’t be traded so seriously.” 

“...So write off the rest of my tab.” 

“What tab? You don’t have a tab.” She sat down beside my towel. Her skin was already dry, apparently as good at shedding water as her jacket was. “I could do better than that, though. You deserve more.” 

“Leon implied that that might not be a good idea.” 

“Leon’s a stupid little shit.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “That kelpie I’d screw over in a deal any day. But you’ve got my word: I’ll play fair with you.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I prefer to. This place is important to me. Too important to get shitty over little details. And you... I hear you’re not a lady to get on the bad side of.” She smiled.

I glared. But I couldn’t keep it up, lying back with a sigh. 

“You’re covered in bruises.” 

“You don’t look like a movie star yourself,” I snapped. And it was a bald-faced lie, because she looked perfect, like the two day coma and inexplicable frostbite simply hadn’t happened to her. 

“I wasn’t critiquing your survival skills. You went up against Jen and got out alive. I’m just... sorry that you did all that for someone you can’t trust.” 

“I’m a police officer,” I said shortly. “I don’t trust anyone.” I fished a smooth, round pebble from the sand and chucked it out into the water. It made a satisfying glug.

Despite that, to be sane, I had to trust a few people. And maybe those lines were completely arbitrary and completely stupid, and maybe Sally had wound up on my side of them somehow. And maybe I did trust her, at least to be as good as her word. To be honest about not being human, to tell me when the technicalities stood between us. I’d liked her, and that was part of why I’d gone out into the dark to try to help her. Not the essential part-- that was all on being a police officer-- but a part. 

Maybe that was overly optimistic of me. I’d just have to take that risk. 

Sally pulled up her knees, draping her arms across them. We sat and watched reflection of the sun setting, until the last strip of pink was glowing in the sky behind us, and the moon was rising up over the lake. It didn’t get unnaturally bright this time, with no magical, murderous fairy horse to frame. It was a lot nicer this way.

“It’s been a hell of a week, hasn’t it?” Sally said, looking up at the faint, early stars. “I’m sorry your vacation didn’t turn out.” 

“I have a few days to salvage some fun,” I said dryly. “Maybe catch a show at the multiplex you have here. Go to one of your many night clubs. Oh, wait...” 

Sally made a considering sound. Then she rolled over and placed a hand, questioning, on my hip. 

“No games. No favors,” she murmured. “I could use a warm bed tonight. Could you?” 

I didn’t think nearly as long as I should have; I took the lapels of her jacket and pulled her in for a long, slow kiss. 

We made our way, kissing occasionally, up to the cabin. I got the door open and found it stifling; despite the ‘bed’ proviso, Sally didn’t object to my quick dash in to grab a blanket and subsequent re-direction towards a sheltered patch of grass where we wouldn’t be seen from the road. 

There was some good-natured pushing and pulling and jockeying for top spot-- she was strong, graceful, but not a martial artist. And she moved slowly on land, as if she was considering everything. I got her rolled under me, my knees around her hips, and she shimmied off her jacket, wedging it securely under her head. 

The game quickly became a mock-battle between us, me trying to kiss her and stroke her breasts, her trying to get my bra unhooked, and after that, my shirt over my shoulders. Her skin was smooth, taut, felt just a hair thicker than a human’s, and her stomach and breasts rippled as she wrestled me out of my clothes. 

I gave in and pulled my shorts off myself, taking the opportunity to reposition so that when I leaned over her again-- with a little shift to get the weight off my ankle, I really needed to get an ace bandage-- my face was level with her breasts.

I don’t like having my breasts played with much, and generally feel a little guilty at how much I enjoy being the one doing the playing on someone else. But Sally seemed to be one of those people who do like it, if her hips rocking under me were any indication. Either way, neither of us were complaining.

I sucked one nipple slowly, drawing it up hard, and kissed a long path down the slope of her cleavage and up the other side to get at the other one. 

“Stop for a second,” she said, and gave me a suggestion of a shove back, so that she could rearrange us-- now I was straddling one leg, my right knee between her thighs, and she slid down the blanket until she had it just where she wanted it, crossing her legs behind my thigh. “Carry on.” 

I did. Spent a lot of time exploring her breasts, moved up to her mouth-- she ground against my leg, gently for a while, building strength, her skin getting hotter and slicker with sweat, the rock of her hips starting to get harder. She was obviously having a good time, and parts south were starting to get a little jealous. 

“All right,” she said, patting my hair, her cheeks flushed red. “Enough of that.” 

“Wh--” and then she rolled me over, all strange inhuman strength, pushed me up the blanket, and paused, kneeling between my ankles. “If you don’t mind?” she asked politely, and I gave her a dour look. She smiled innocently back and dove for my crotch just shy of dangerously fast. 

I’d been a little wet; I’d liked her breasts, her shape and movements, had been interested even though I wasn’t getting much action; she quickly remedied that, her tongue going right into the folds of my labia without any cute messing around. Don’t get me wrong, I like the cute messing around sometimes, but she got me from about fifteen to sixty with her tongue and that was impressive and also amazingly good. 

“...Do seals carry herpes?” 

She laughed into my crotch, a really unfortunately barking sound. “No,” she snickered, and went back down, tongue thrusting into my vagina to rim the walls, then out so that she could circle and suck my clitoris daintily. A little earlier in the game than I was usually ready for that, but not actually unwelcome at all. I squirmed to let her know to keep going, slung one knee up over her narrow shoulders to give her more room to maneuver, and lay back to enjoy it.

She seemed to be enjoying herself, too. I thought of half a dozen awful jokes right away and mentioned none of them, because if she started laughing she would stop doing that, and if she stopped doing that I wasn’t going to come in about fifteen seconds ten five three two-- 

I went all loose. Orgasm does amazing things for stiff muscles, I’ve always found. She took advantage of it to run her own reconnaissance over my body, hands stroking my calves and up between my thighs, over my stomach and breasts, dipping under to lift me by the ass and pull me closer. Her touch started light-- I complained. Okay, whined. Her grip went firm, hard enough to make last night’s bruises twinge as she passed over them. It was base and physical and immediate and left me wanting more more more, right now.

I tried to get a hand between her thighs, but that wasn’t going to happen with my butt on her knees. 

“If you don’t let me return the favor, I’ll think you’re setting me up.” There was an edge to it, but it still came down on the side of the line that said it was a joke. It helped that my voice came out mellower and breathier than it would have under any other circumstances. 

“Impatient,” she said, with a put upon little sigh that wasn’t fooling anyone, and let me wriggle back and pull her down so that we were side by side and I could get my hand where we wanted it. 

Sleek. Her labia were sleek, the hair as bizarrely straight and smooth as it had looked, everything sort of tucked inside a neat, demure little mound. I rubbed the outer lips with the heel of my hand, sneaking a finger inside to stroke a little. She was ready-- moist and happily humping against my palm, and when I stroked her inner labia and touched her entrance, she lifted a leg eagerly to give me room to work. I teased in two fingers, ring and middle, cupping the outside of her mound with my thumb and pinky, grinding circles against her clitoris with the heel of my hand.

She started to make loud, demanding groans-- and then fumbled, panting, for my wrist. “Not this.” 

“My mouth-?” 

She pulled me closer, twining our legs so that we each had a convenient thigh, and started licking my neck. Her mouth still tasted like eating out when she came in for the kiss; I rode with it. 

I was building up to orgasm number two when she hit hers-- loud, her thighs locking almost painfully tight around my leg, muscles going rigid and her body moving in all kinds of interesting ways. She huffed a few times, jerking her hips against my leg, and then pulled back, her legs pressed together, the rest of her loose and sprawling. 

“Okay?” it was more of a pant than a question, my fingers rushing down to get where her leg had been a minute before.

“Sensitive,” she said, voice rough. “Still good.” Her hips gave a little jerk, her expression dopey, riding through an aftershock. 

I nodded, and sprawled back to finish up number two against my own hand, and shortly thereafter, three, while she ran her fingers down my torso and back up, a light stroking motion that made the muscles of my stomach twitch in counterpoint to the slight tremble in my thighs. 

I swatted at her hand when I was done, and we lay there with the crickets starting to chirp, my stomach and knees still loose, and the pair of us both panting. 

“May I stay?” she asked, a few long minutes later. 

I jerked out of the dozy half-stupor I was settling into, little jolts of warm and pulsing and tingly still running their way up my middle and down my legs. I wasn’t sure how to handle this politely. “I won’t stop you,” I said. She nodded, so apparently the unspoken ‘I won’t invite you inside’, however useless in a rental place, was understandable. 

“I’m going to grab a shower.” 

“I prefer the lake,” she said with a nod, gathering up her jacket. “I’ll be back soon.” 

“Just knock,” I said, and we went our separate ways. The pull-chain shower ran lukewarm, and that was fine with me; my body temperature slowly started to lower, my heartrate started to come down, and I only half dried off, letting the breeze through the windows chill the remaining water a little. My ankle was starting to throb again; I swallowed some aspirin and promised myself an ace bandage tomorrow, folding up a blanket at the foot of the bed for later. 

Whatever Sally had done in the lake had her fresh as a daisy; she knocked, and I let her in, locking the door behind her. She folded her jacket over the back of one of the two kitchen chairs and l came up beside her. When I touched her body, she was deep-lake cool, and she chuckled when I made an exaggeratedly lustful sound and plastered myself against her. 

“This is why I like the water,” she said. 

“And yet here you are,” I reminded her.

She hugged me, and tugged me to the little bed. “Here I am.”

* * *

The heat, if anything, was worse the next two days of vacation. I spent a lot of it inside, elevating my ankle, keeping ice packs tucked under my neck and the small of my back just because it felt good to be cool. Between the ice packs, the ace-wrap, the disinfectant, and the bandaids, I pretty much bought out Robin’s little pharmacy aisle.

At least the ice burns that the handmaiden had left on me quickly faded, and so did the scrapes and lacerations; Sally had sold me a balm that had helped. The twenty bucks I’d paid had eased both our minds, I think, because we were still a little cautious with each other. 

She was on her own enforced leave-- the nurse at the hospital had all but forbidden her to go back to work for the next week, and Sally wasn’t going to risk raising more suspicion by popping open the bar and being cheerfully on her feet ten hours a day so soon after being in a coma. Especially after her bout of surprisingly temporary frostbite. Courting mortal intervention, she told me during one of our careful tit-for-tat information and backrub exchanges, was a serious political gaffe among the fae, even for a gone-native black-sheep Selkie. 

The second day out of the hospital, I didn’t see much of her-- she had some very careful answers to give Sheriff Payton, in response to a load of piercing questions. I’m very familiar with the art of bullshitting away the supernatural in a police report, and it’s not easy even when you have the option of straying over to the looser side of the truth. I felt for Sally. 

I also felt for Sheriff Payton. I'd been on her side of this kind of situation too many times to count, more than enough for anyone. An inexplicable crime with no real closure, just the assurance that somehow it was over and life was going to go on as usual. 

That's not enough, for a good cop. And I was sorry. 

Maybe I should keep an eye out up here. If anything like this happened again, I could get her in touch with the OLEBES. She deserved to know. 

 

That night, Sally vanished for a while. There was white fire over the lake. 

The third morning, she came over to Foss’s place looking exhausted, and while I didn’t invite her in, I did let her come in (it’s an important distinction) and sleep on me. 

She spent most of the rest of the day with me. It kept things from being boring, and that balm of hers really worked. Except that it smelled like fish oil, and when she joined me in bed-- okay, which was a lot of the time-- she kept licking it off. Otherwise, awesome. 

We talked a lot, like I said. Carefully.

“I destroyed the Kelpie’s lair,” she said, lying half across me, a towel-wrapped ice pack nestled between us, the fan creaking overhead. “Should have done it years ago. Just didn’t want to deal with the notice. The political fallout. Figured I’d wait a few decades for the twins’ mother to get back into town...” She sighed. “Waited too long. But the little fucker will be hauling ass out of town now. And if I find hoofprints within ten miles of this stretch of coast I will go Wild Hunt on the appropriate asses.” 

I decided that Wild Hunt, while interesting sounding, wasn’t worth a barter session; I just stroked her sleek hair idly and let her talk. 

“He-- or she depending on who she’s trying to drown today-- is going to make a stink about being attacked with iron, but he doesn’t have enough allies to ride in and defend him. Jen, on the other hand...” Sally sighed deeply. “Common knowledge, that I thee speak, okay? Iron is... sort of the nuclear option.” 

“It’s convenient, isn’t it, how a regular person’s only real defense against you assholes is taboo,” I said. Sally nodded against my chest, unoffended. 

“I’ll figure something out.” 

“Sal--” 

“Karrin,” she said, just as firmly. “Covering your bar tab does not erase my debt of skin, all right? Maybe to some other fae, whose people don’t have a history of slavery by every asshole who thinks a sealskin on the beach means a free wife-slash-thrall. Not to me.” 

I contemplated kicking her out of bed just because this whole thing was still deeply uncomfortable territory. But the exertion would make me hot and I was mellow and sort of loose-muscled and didn’t want to. 

She let it drop after that, which worried me, but not so much that I couldn’t enjoy what happened next.

* * *

I spent the next day out on Mister Foss’s little rowboat, fishing a little, reading a mindless lawyer slash investigator thriller I’d found in one of Foss’s cupboards, mostly cruising the lake and warming up my stiff arms. Sally had left Foss’s place early in the morning, to start tidying up her bar with the help of the twins-- who were now back in their house, not camping out in the bar. But in the late afternoon I saw a lean dark body in the water, circling my boat, popping up to blow a burst of lake water at me and making a barking, laughing sound. 

"Hey, hey," I said. "Fishing here. Stop scaring off the catch." 

She submerged, slapping water into the boat with her wide back flippers, good thing Foss’s book hadn’t been in good shape to begin with, and then came up on the other side of the boat and rolled lazily onto her back, showing her belly like a dog begging for a scratch. I obliged with a pat. 

She went under with a stream of bubbles, popping up and bobbing expectantly in front of me. 

“The last time I followed a charming and strangely intelligent animal near the lake it tried to drown me,” I said, lofting a brow at her. 

She sneezed water at me again, and I rolled my eyes and followed her as she swam circles around me, moving at a meandering pace along the coastline until she decided she liked me where she was, and stared meaningfully at my anchor. I shrugged and dropped anchor. 

I caught absolutely nothing, but Sally occasionally flipped a fish into the boat, which I stuffed into the cooler. Then she went flying towards the lake shore, and I could distantly see her scoot out onto the land, and then stand up on two legs, waving to me and giving me a "stay" sign with her hands, and then darting up the beach to disappear. 

I spent another luckless hour or so fishing, keeping an eye on shore-- Sally was back, carrying something or other. I could see a dock and a concrete boat ramp; I steered in to tie up. Sally’d led me to a public park, empty pavilions and abandoned picnic tables dotting the shoreline. As I got closer to shore I could see her pickup up in the gravel parking area, and she had moved in on one of the public grills near the tables, a bag of charcoal off to the side and a few grocery bags with her. At some point-- I was assuming before she went shopping for a cookout-- she’d gotten dressed. 

"I bought it, you cook," she said cheerfully. 

"And what if I had plans tonight?" 

She gave me a smile and a little hipcock. I rolled my eyes. 

We cooked out as the sun turned afternoon gold and started its slow, lazy decent towards the west. 

"I'll be glad when it's winter again," she said, tossing me a foil wrapped corn on the cob, because she was staying away from the cast iron grill. She was resistant enough to drive a truck, I noticed, but when she didn't need to she wasn't rolling around on iron. I wondered if that was part of the 'going native' thing, or if it was a species thing. "Changing skins in the sunlight is always so raw feeling. Instant sunburn."

"Is that why Leon wanted to meet me at twilight? Foot rub for the answer." 

"Deal. No, he has trouble with sunlight. A lot of fae do, if they aren't used to being out of the Nevernever. He'll come out in it if it's important." 

Important like trying to lure me back to his bed to screw and kill. "Good to know. Not that I'm looking for more trouble--" 

"Would you order me a pizza tomorrow?" she asked, conversationally, out of nowhere. 

"Are you kidding? The delivery price is--" 

"With anchovies." 

I paused. Understood. "Yeah. With anchovies. I'm picking them off my slices, though." 

"Greenteeth wasn't expanding her territory on a whim," Sally said, suddenly serious. "Something is shaking up the Courts. The balances are shifting in a big way. The vampires have been pushing for them to take sides; nobody wants to, but everyone's preparing for it anyway. The Courts are testing each other. Pushing their boundaries. And leaning on the local wyldfae to take sides. Summer’s been feeling rocky for a while now anyway; something big’s stirring there. They’re making a big push this year." She waved a hand up at the sky, the burning sun. 

I wasn’t sure if I was ready to deal with that thought.

She picked up a stone, spinning it expertly out onto the lake with frustrated strength. I didn't count the skips: more than a few. "Jen wasn't acting on orders from the Queens; this patch of the lake is already at least nominally Winter-- the twins' mom has been here for a very, very long time, and she’s conditionally with that Court. That’s about all the good news I have." 

I nodded quietly. She went on: 

"If there isn't a war, there will be a tension. And there will be border fighting; Summer was watching when Jen made her move on me, waiting to see who’d come out on top-- you probably felt it, the big sleep they put across the town, to keep the mortal authorities out. It held until the twins called 911-- dangerous of them. But smart. Mortal sounds, mortal sirens, are good for breaking up spells like that. 

“Leon planted a ‘knife here’ sign on your back by telling you everything he did; it makes you a dangerous mortal. That _will_ get out. Chicago is going to be a little safer for you than here, in its way. It takes a while for news to make the big city. And because that's the home base of the vampire conflict, the Courts moved in once it started... so any Sidhe conflict there will involve the Ladies in some way, nominally if not directly, and if you’re lucky you’ll be too small a fish for Maeve to go after. But... be ready. This isn't over." 

"Great," I said, suddenly tired, and went to go get the vegetables off the grill and put a new batch of fish on. We ate, talked a little, brushed elbows and legs as we watched the lake, late birds dipping down to snatch at insects over the water, wind making ripples across it. It wasn’t rational, but I had a kind of pride. I’d survived that lake, and I felt like I was proving something to it every time I was in or on it. 

Sally had other deep thoughts on her mind: “You know, I’ve never actually had a s’more? I got the stuff: teach me your strange mortal ways.” 

After dinner I swam myself to a more comfortable, physical exhaustion, encouraged by the way my ankle was behaving itself; I gave Sally the promised foot-rub as she sprawled on a blanket and made appreciative noises, and the sun was setting by the time we packed up. 

She backed up her truck to the boat launch, and together we carefully wrangled the rowboat out of the water and into the truck. It was older, not one of the cute fiberglass ones they have these days-- really probably called for a boat trailer, but I’m stronger than I look and Sally was apparently even more so.

She gave me a ride back to the cabin, which we wrangled out was included in the pizza offering. Apparently she really liked the stuff. It was interesting to let someone else drive; I looked out the window, half-focused on the trees and scrub whipping by, half drowsing. Then the figure came out of the trees, almost stepping right in front of us. 

"Shit," I said, startled, and Sally whipped her head back, swore, and pulled over. 

"Nadine, fuck me." 

She got out of the truck and advanced on the badly-timed hiker-- a curvy, gorgeous woman in daisy dukes and a halter top, wearing impractical flip-flops. She had what could only be described as a mane of hair, and a noted resemblance to Leon. Down to the very mobile lips when she snarled. 

"I thought I told you to get out of town," Sally said, her shoulders rising up around her ears. 

"I'm outside the legal limits," the woman sulked, and flashed one perfectly manicured middle finger. "I'm _going_ , skinchanger, and will not go into the lake again until I am far from your waters. But Green Bay is not yours." 

"Don't get exploratory," Sally warned. "Start pushing your territory and I will push back. Hard." 

"Shall I try a southern river instead? Another stretch of coast?" the woman said, with a sneer at me. “And see what luck I have in Illinois?” 

"Stay out of Chicago, Leon," I said pleasantly. 

" _Marelynn,_ " she said, tossing her hair. "This isn't the last time we will meet, mortal." 

I smiled pleasantly at her and Sally and I got back in the truck, leaving her walking along the road behind us. 

Asshole. 

Sally was looking pensive when she dropped me off. "Stop by tomorrow, before you head out, okay?" 

"For the pizza?" I asked, taking my side of the boat. 

She took most of the weight, grunting, and we carried it to the water. "That too.” 

Once it was afloat and tied up, I dusted my hands. “Want some coffee?” Read: sex. 

“Not tonight. I have something to do. But don’t forget to come over tomorrow.”

* * *

Sally’s bar was my last stop on the way out of town, in fact. I was packed up, the cottage was scrubbed, and I’d settled up with Foss, leaving the key in the kitchen like we’d agreed on the phone; all that was left to do was be there to pay for the pizza when it showed up, ridiculous delivery fee and all. The twins were fussing in the kitchen, and I went to give them their goodbyes. 

They hugged me, both at once. I patted their backs, a little bemused, and told them that I’d miss them, too. 

Sally all but kicked the delivery guy out and then promptly ignored the pizza. From what I’d seen her do to cold pizza before, this was not a casual thing. She shoved it into the kitchen with the twins-- “One slice each!” and then closed on me. 

“I swear by my skins that this token does not bind you in obligation,” she said, shoving something into my hand. “Look Karrin, I can’t make myself okay with letting you go unprotected. Jen’s dangerous and Maeve is hell on ice skates if she does decide to get involved. You painted a giant target on yourself for me. Let me do this.” 

I looked, puzzled, at the locket in my palm-- tourist-level and mass produced, decorated with generic celtic knotwork. I flicked it open carefully with a thumbnail. It was one of those ones that you can slide a picture or a lock of hair into: under the clear plastic retainer there was a braided loop of something that looked like double-thickness fishing line, clear and stiff. Across from that, etched into the inside of the cover, tiny, neat circles of that angular hatch mark writing. 

“What is it?” 

“It’s a shield, and it’s a camouflage. It will brush off small influences, muddle your aura a little bit, make you less... noticeable to those who seek you. Befoul their whiskers. Figuratively.” She looked serious, her jaw set. “It can’t do everything. But it should buy you some time. Chicago is a large city; there are humans there who can make stronger wards than this. I’ve heard there’s even one who advertises in the phonebook.” 

“Oh, he’s going to love this,” I muttered, and got a blank look from Sally. “Never mind: just thinking about a friend of mine.” Uterus-bearer in danger! Harry would leap into action and swiftly, proactively shit a brick. 

But, to give him credit, after that he’d make me a ward. 

I looked at the locket for a long moment, and tucked it into my jacket pocket. “Sal. If I find out you’re screwing with me...” 

“I know.” She nodded serenely. 

“Thanks,” I said. She smiled, and I reached out to pull her into something a little more snug and form-fitting than a friendly embrace. “Take care of yourself. The handmaiden’s not going to be thrilled with you, either.” 

“She’s made her play. Now it’s my move,” Sally said. “But I’ll look out after myself. You, too.” 

Her kiss tasted a lot like a smoked-salmon and cream cheese binge, and still left my lips tingling pleasantly even when I’d gotten on my bike and left the little cottage town behind.

* * *

It was still afternoon when I got back to Chicago. I’d made good time-- the roads were pretty clear. Half the reason I’d left on Monday instead of Sunday. I could feel something lift in my chest when the skyline came into view, again when I hit the familiar streets, the sights and sounds and smells I knew. It was good to be home.

My house was in good shape when I got there-- promising. None of my plants were dead, my mail was in a neat stack on the counter by the phone. I dropped my saddlebags on the kitchen table and grabbed the handset from the cradle, punching in Dresden’s work number. He answered like he always did, like he was half afraid something was going to crawl through from the other side, and I let him know I was back in town and thanked him for not setting anything on fire. We talked for a minute or two about how my trip had been, then I begged off and said I’d swing by and visit them sometime later. 

I didn’t tell him about Sally. Or the twins, or Leon, or the handmaiden. Any of it. I would later, at least some of it, but... it was too big of a conversation to have when I was still in my motorcycle boots, still had a sunburn peeling on my shoulders. 

I started stripping as soon as I hung up, losing my boots in the kitchen, my jacket on the way to the bathroom, and showered under actual water pressure, scrubbing my hair until it felt clean.

Then I phoned Carmichael. 

“Sounds like you had a busy trip,” he said. “How was Mister Foss’s cabin? Or was my character reference the straw that made the camel kick you out?”

“Funny,” I said. “He actually called, huh?”

“As did Sheriff Andrea Payton of the Door County Sheriff’s Department. You being lured away by the bright lights and excitement of rural Wisconsin?”

“Gosh, sir,” I said. “It sure is tempting, but I just don’t know if I can keep up with the breakneck pace. Nah, local got injured in a home robbery. We’d been getting along so I showed up at her place just in time to give a statement. Local case,” I added, a second later, because I knew Carmichael’s brain would go exactly where mine would, if our positions were switched, that he’d be wondering if the trouble at home had followed me out there. “Left it behind me.” 

"Interesting case like that, I thought she might try to poach you. Frostbite in the middle of June, weird comas...." 

"Nnn," I said, noncommittally. It was an information packed syllable. It said 'all right, you got me' and 'I have no concerns to share at this time’. 

"Murphy, you sure you didn't get yourself into trouble?" 

I remembered Sally thrusting the ward into my hand-- which I needed to get checked out by Harry. Not that I didn't trust her, but because I knew I shouldn't. It was still in my jacket pocket, lying in the hall. 

"I'm keeping an eye on it, Sarge." 

He made a skeptical sound. "Top brass already wondering when you're going to get back on the clock. Because we're short on manpower." 

"Irresponsible of me to take a vacation, wasn't it?" I drawled.

"Well, we all know what a slacker you are," he replied, with the same brand of resigned sarcasm. "You’ll be busy tomorrow. Homicide's been tying up a lot of resources on a gun violence thing, we're on a shoestring."

"It must be a hell of a gun violence thing." Gun violence in Chicago is about par for the course these days. 

"A gang came out of nowhere, lit up a little old Japanese guy just outside St. Mary's, and disappeared. Somebody tossed the church, too, and there's been motion around the house of the family the victim was staying with." 

"Jesus," I swore.

"Guy's scrappy. Hanging on in the ICU. But this kind of publicity the city doesn't need. Some poor tourist getting shot in front of a church. Time to go rattle cages."

That meant rounding up scapegoats, shaking down local gangs. Most of the best armed people in the city these days were the street gangs, it was true. But those gangs had made a kind of grudging peace because the alternative was getting eaten by vampires; they’d been ratcheted back a few grudging notches on the ‘greatest evil in the city’ races. And the woman in charge of the man in charge of the city's organized crime family-- much closer to the front of the pack in that race-- would love if a few of the people standing in her undead army’s way went down for a convenient crime. Who needs to catch the actual perp when you’ve got political enemies who need to be taken out of the way? 

"Any reason why the victim was targeted?" I asked, because if there was some new element in the city we had to be ready. And because I knew Vargassi's cronies in the force would happily hang a little old man out to dry for his own attempted murder if they had any excuse. 

"Nothing anybody knows about. The only smudge on his record is that family he's staying with aren't friends of the Vargassis, but they're too clean to make a bigger smudge out of it. Nah, someone's going to have to go down for this or people will notice." 

"Crap," I said.

"Yeah. See you tomorrow." 

 

When I hung up, I realized that I’d been hearing a faint buzzing that had suddenly stopped-- a quick search found my cell phone. It had vibrated itself off the coffee table and been muffled in the thick rug. The screen was flashing at me to let me know I'd missed a call, and I had new voicemail. I listened to it: it was a pause, and a click. But it was Mom, so I called back.

"Oh!" she said, relieved. "Karrin. I've been trying to get you all morning." 

"I just got back in. What's up?" Sheriff Payton wouldn't have called Mom, would she, and scared her? No-- what was I thinking? She hadn’t even known I’d been in the lake, that I’d been injured.

"Lillian's ride to the airport fell through and I lent my car to Lisa, I don't know when she'll be back." 

I decided to be relieved that Mom didn't know how close I'd come to being a Lake Michigan disappearance statistic instead of being bitter that I hadn't been allowed to drive the family car without supervision or a strict flight plan until I was eighteen.

"Sure," I said pre-emptively, before she could start trying to convince me. I was too tired to protest being drafted as a chauffeur and it wasn't Lillian's fault.

* * *

Lillian's trip had obviously been a shopping trip; she doesn't live close to much, and Chicago is a big vista full of retailers and culture. Her baggage was at least three times the size it had been when she arrived. 

She chattered her goodbyes to my mom, but fell into a welcome silence once I'd helped her into my car, leaning back heavily against the seat that I hadn't bothered to take out of the 'pushed all the way back and slightly reclined' position from when I'd picked her up in the first place. 

She looked tired. The family can be a little... exhausting.

"How was your leave?" she asked, when we were on the highway and she'd rested her eyes a little. It was considerate of her. She didn't call it a vacation, and she didn't tack the 'psychiatric' on the front that I knew my family probably had at least guessed at. 

"It was nice," I half-lied. "I went up to Wisconsin, spent some time on the lake. Got a lot of sun." 

"You look like you got sun. Did you get in an accident or something?" 

I flicked a glance at her, but there wasn't actually a hidden condemnation anywhere in her question, or on her face. A glance in the little sun visor mirror-- my scrapes were fading but not faded, and I still looked a little rough.

"Waterskiing," I full-lied. "Wiped out on a sandbar." 

She made a face. "Still, you look like you had a... good time?" 

There was a coded message that time, but gently questioning, a little gossipy. No judgement.

"Made friends with a local." 

"Ooh," said Lillian, with interest.

"She showed me around," I added, letting the pronoun fall like a lead block. 

"That sounds lovely," Lillian said after the barest pause, smiling in a slightly sympathetic way-- she got my point. She wasn't going to talk about it, because our family didn't talk about it. But it was all right. We didn't have much in common, but Lillian had never been the type to act like that was a failing of mine. 

She leaned back against the seat again, and the rest of the drive was friendly and silent.

* * *

I carried her baggage to the check for her while she rolled her carry-on; she put up a token protest but looked grateful that her now-bulging suitcases were under control. 

We'd gotten there early enough that she didn't have to fight her way through security right away; I offered her a coffee and she said 'yes' with a haunted look. 

Right. Mom and her ideas about pregnancy. 

We settled into a cafe and ordered our coffees, and because we were both hungry enough to risk airport prices, an early dinner. Lillian wanted a salad with obscene amounts of cheese; I hadn't eaten since Wisconsin and wanted everything on the menu. I settled for a cheeseburger. 

As we sipped coffee and waited for the food, Lillian glanced over my shoulder. 

"Did you hear about the shooting outside St. Mary's?" she asked. I'd been distracted, building a grocery list in my head; I looked a little startled at her. 

"My sergeant told me about it when I checked in." 

"It's awful, isn't it? That poor man." She gestured behind me, and I turned to see what had brought it up-- a stack of newspapers, with a bold point 'tourist caught in gang war?' headline and a picture of the victim below.

It was Shiro. 

"Karrin?" Lillian said. "Karrin, are you okay?" 

I turned to her. The waitress had come, gone, and left our food, unnoticed.

"I met that guy in the airport. When I came to pick you up." 

"Oh my God." Lillian looked appalled. "Are you okay?" 

"I'm." Christ. Just a nice little guy who'd wanted a cinnamon scone. "No. But I will be." 

She just nodded, and ate her salad. I wasn't hungry anymore; I headed up to the cashier to ask for a box for my meal. I'd need it later; experience had taught me that as sudden and absolute as my loss of appetite was, it wouldn't last. In an hour my emotions would settle and my body would still need fuel. 

Lillian kept glancing at me worriedly as we finished up and I walked her to the security gate to say goodbye. "Are you going to be okay, hon?" 

I nodded, and she gave me a carefully negotiated hug around her stomach before walking slowly into the security line, rolling her carry-on behind her. 

I watched her all the way through, and stayed standing there for a while after, tucked in a corner and watching people come and go, letting my emotions process. I’d barely met the man; I couldn’t claim to have known him. I’d seen victims of violence before. But there was always a shock with violence like that. Senseless. Jarring. And all I could think of was how calm Shiro had been. How quietly happy. 

Someone cleared their throat beside me, and I turned to see a janitor pushing a cart. I hadn't even heard him come up, and that was terrifying. Christ, Murphy. Snap out of it.

"Officer Murphy," said the janitor, and I froze, hand going to a sidearm I wasn't wearing. Misplaced paranoia was one thing. Being approached in a quiet corner by someone who knew my name screamed 'Vargassi hitman.' I couldn't see a gun, but the cart was one big handy hiding place. How had they known? They couldn't tap a cell phone, but they could easily have tapped mom's land line. 

"You've got the advantage,"I said, playing for time, discretely looking around for the nearest security officer. "Ah..." I read his nametag. "Jake." 

"Shiro left something for you." 

My back tensed when he reached into the cart, and I didn't untense noticeably when he pulled out a poster tube instead of a gun. I was perplexed, but not reassured. 

"That wouldn't be evidence from a crime scene, would it?" 

"No. He passed it to me before he met you. He knew his enemies were close, and looking for it." 

"Are you a friend of his?" I asked. 

"I'm in his organization." He was still holding out the poster tube, face impassive. "He'll live. But he cannot carry it anymore. I ask you to take up the burden." 

"Why?" 

"Because you don't need it." 

I felt my hand close around the poster tube even as I was running through the list of all the improvised explosives it could be, looked down at it as if it might explode, and looked back up.

Jake was gone. 

I ran-not-walked into a woman's bathroom, doing a quick look around-- it was blessedly abandoned, no civilians to take the brunt of it if I'd just picked up a bomb. I used the little wooden doorstop to wedge the door shut; it would give me a second to warn anybody out. Working methodically, I pulled down the changing table, yanked the top out of the poster tube and poured out the contents. 

It wasn't a bomb. It was a cloth bundle around what, on closer examination, turned out to be a katana. A beautiful sword. Old. Impeccably maintained. Stolen? An heirloom? A warning? 

I had time to call a bomb squad, now, but it didn't actually seem to be a pipe bomb. The hilt wasn't large enough to conceal a really powerful explosive, and I didn't see marks to indicate that it had been broken into.

Using the cloth to keep from leaving prints on it, I reached out to pick up the sword.

It was like the cloth wasn't there. A rush came through the sword and into me, like a lead apron falling over my shoulders even as a sense of tranquility and strength counterbalanced that weight. It glowed, a soft blue radiance I knew I'd seen before. 

I realized that I knew the sword's name. It was in my mind as if I always had. Shiro had wielded it. It wasn't a gift; it was a burden. And it was my choice whether to shoulder it or not. If I put it down, and meant it, put it back in the poster tube and handed it over to the police, the weight would fall off of me again. 

There was a little business card in the case with it: a contracting firm, carpentry and construction. I knew the name-- Michael Carpenter was a friend of Harry Dresden's. Also not a friend of the Vargassis. But clean. Had a sword a lot like this one. I'd seen it glow in his hands when he’d used it to cut a demon in half before it could take out an entire armed police team, including me.

I thinned my lips. 

In the past week I’d nearly been murdered by a horse, actually been rescued by two baby hellcrabs, and given a woman's skin back to her so that she could turn back into a seal or sea lion or whichever one it was. I'd been told that the lines were being drawn for war between two foreign powers, and I had assaulted a high-ranking member of one sides' government. 

Now someone had given me a weapon. 

And I had work tomorrow. 

My life, ladies and gentlemen.


End file.
